5: Hammer of Thor Chronicles: The Augment
by La Aardvark
Summary: Somewhere in the deep of space, there is a world, and its sun. On a periodic cycle of three days, this duo will disappear, though to where no one knows, and then return. Going there is quite possibly the biggest mistake ever made...
1. The Greatest Epic Oops

**1: Greatest Epic Oops**

**ANUNA-01**

I have walked in fire.

Faced hordes of unfaltering foes.

In times of crises, it was I who held the sword.

I stayed my hand when it was right to do so, even at cost to my own honor…

And I, and my people, are alive today to bear witness to that fact.

Circling the planetoid – for it might well not even be a real world, given – I took in the serene view with a clenching sense of foreboding in my gut. There are many ways to say the same sentiment, many ways of expressing one's apprehension about a certain artifact of circumstance. But, to me, there was also a defunct presence of curiosity. Morbid, perhaps, but while my inner voice insisted I would die down there, my outer voice wanted to see what it was that would kill me so absolutely.

Maybe I am getting old… maybe I have reached that stage where, in the final throes of youth, I am grasping at the trailing threads of adventure that had plagued my younger years. Maybe I was merely bored with having sat idle aboard a star cruiser for the past six months. I hadn't even earned the pity of a harmless duel with a comrade in that time.

Yes… that was it. And now, facing some form of mockery, it was without question that I had no defense of wisdom. I was going to march right forward into this mess, whatever mess it might become, and I would do so with enthusiasm. Only after would it occur to me to berate myself the foolishness of such a venture, only after when it was by far too late to really matter.

Save for the berating, of course.

One mustn't be neglectful of one's self-derogatory functions, after all. Forerunners know I have had my share of kick-self-in-tender-place moments. Quite a few, if memory serves, had consolidated around the events in which that seemingly luckless Human was present. What was his name, again…? Oh, he may never have told me. I have a vague recollection of a few random tidbits, and perhaps this is me admitting that I have been hit in the head one too many times – or perhaps a few times too hard? – and now like a senile Elder cannot recall regardless of the age of the memory.

I should hope that is not the case.

Still, there remained the edge of tension, that glorious supposition that one gets when one just knows, above all shadow of doubt, that one is about to be commanded to embark upon yet another fulfilling mission where lives could be lost… in ways fit for the recounting, so that one's Kaidon might retell it to the eager young trainees long, long after one has already suffered the fate. Perhaps I am being morbid. Perhaps this is just me being bored, as the Humans put it, 'out of my skull'. Surely death counts as a viable exit from one's head, does it not?

Back to topic.

To my right was a hardened veteran I had worked with over the past couple of seasons… he was a chunky fellow, broad of frame and thick of muscle. He wasn't any stronger than I, particularly, but then, while wiry by comparison, I was almost a half a head taller. So it might well be he had all the same mass as I, but folded down over a shorter frame. It might explain why he looked so very thick. His name was Rano Ka'alimee.

Interestingly enough, he had not discarded the military honorific denoting him as a warrior, after the Schism. I had… most of us had. Some, like Rano, had not. I feared the topic too tender to broach to ask him why, but there remained no question about his loyalties; he was pure and simple Sangheili. Slightly behind him and even more to my right, reclined another companion of length; Iganiu 'Chaseun. Now, Iganiu – or Igan to those who he felt deserved the honor – was a peculiar fellow beyond the tongue-tangling pronounciation of his odd name.

Not that it was unusual for my kind overall – like any race, we were not all one solid culture. While all pretty much wholly indoctrinated into the religion of the Prophets and their mantra, we retained a casual socio-economic separation from one another. A good for instance was our internal caste system, but this ran a little deeper. Igan was from, shall we say, the 'far side of the world', than I and those like me.

Rano, for example.

Igan was no less the warrior, and while I admit I had never seen him fight to the bloody end with a blade, I have spoken to those who have. They all tell me never to ask for a display.

Maybe I'll learn to listen one of these days… in the mean time, I had witnessed Igan pick heads off of shoulders around the curve of the planet. I had also seen him peer out of cover, duck back before losing his own noggin, aim his remarkable rifle at the cover he stood behind, and shoot blind.

He still took that head.

So, while not terribly prone to close quarters, and by word, best that none should beg it of him, Igan was quite possibly the most valued member of any given strike team. Certainly, my own (perhaps overzealously) worthy bloodline had not earned me that title in ours. Do not doubt I had served my own; indeed, I had even spared Igan himself the need to bring up his blade. We all had, in our own way, saved one another's skins at one time or other. It was just the way of the team, the way of war, and the nature of going into battle with backup. Still, even without the Covenant deciding how and when and where we went, I was still seemingly permanently separated from my brother. I had not seen him – again – for more than a year.

That part had started to annoy me, as while I felt confident he was still quite alive and perhaps even doing well, I still wanted to have better contact than a badly lagging comn connection. So for the moment, it was just myself and my two friends, Confidence and Supposition.

Now, don't get me wrong, Rano and Igan were pretty good. For friends, they made the cut. For teammates, I'd take two of each. But as far as being all I had in the galaxy for longer than is fair to a body's sanity? No… I'd rather be alone. And I do not mean the ribbing.

That part actually made it more bearable.

"If you stare any more at that world 'Vadum, perhaps it will disappear again." Rano's gruff voice interrupted my thoughts. "We will all be doubtless happier if it does."

.

FLINT-093

Settling the bird aground behind the frontlines was relatively simple. But while there was no real reason to need to be armored, expressly, I still wished I'd had the brains to put my Mjolnir Mark VII on this morning, instead of waiting until after we'd made landfall. I wasn't going to get attacked, not physically… but there was this nifty little feature the armor had that I really wished I could be using about now.

Tori would not leave it alone. Something had ticked her off – and I'm not entirely sure if it wasn't me – and she'd been fussing and sniping at me ever since breakfast. Getting away from her was out of the question, as was any reasonable attempt at diplomacy. She wanted to fight, and she wanted to scream at me, and I guess there was just nothing I could do about that.

Barging into the cockpit again after having left it to get dressed in her Mark IIX, I knew before her mouth opened that she'd only used the moment away to think up something new, and compose her next scathing line.

As if on queue, out it came; "You have a stack of problems as tall as you are! That _cat_ is easier to talk to than you, most days. Do you have any idea how much effort it takes not to bite your head off sometimes??"

I sighed. Man I wished I had my suit on… helmet and all… I could shut her out and she'd never notice until much later. "Yesterday you told me you appreciated that I was honest with you." I told her, flatly. "Today you want me to lie to you?"

"You could at least _act_ like it bothers you, Flint." Tori snapped, dropping hard into the copilot's seat. I didn't even bother to complain about the treatment she'd given the furnishings… inanimate objects got a lot of abuse when she lost her temper, and I was not about to give her more reason to get a lot more personal with that attitude. I was also not going to add another list to the gripes she had against me.

"But it doesn't." I could have done it in my sleep, but I traced the movements of my fingers on the control board with my gaze and paid a little extra attention to the readings on the screen just to justify not having to look at her. She'd likely only be glaring anyway.

"But it _does_! Four days ago you kicked me off the bed because it woke you up!" She argued. "I didn't want to be a soldier, Flint, this is _your_ fault!"

Finally, I looked at her. "Tori."

Yup – there was a signature peeved-at-Flint look on her face. I'd gotten to see it a few times before now. "Don't you _Tori_ me, Flint." She shot back, through her teeth. Jabbing a finger at me, she added, "I _told_ you I'm no good at that shit and you made me do it anyway, and then you had the balls to complain when I didn't do it perfectly!"

I let one eyebrow quirk up. It was probably the first time either had gone anywhere besides down in a little more than three hours, now. "What shit would this be?"

She huffed; "Well if you've forgotten then I'm not about to remind you, or you'll just fuss at me _again_, and I really don't want to hear it! I've had enough of your bullshit."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I protested, now more confused than miffed. The sloop wound down on its own, and I knew I needed to be heading for the arms locker, but if I moved an inch I had a feeling Tori'd just pounce on me… and without my own armor, I'd be easy meat for her. "If you're going to rattle on about grievances you don't even want to make known, then just shut the hell up. I'm not going to have an argument about _nothing_ with you."

"Don't tell me to shut up!" She shrieked. "I'm sick to death of bouncing from one shooting match to another, never doing anything else, and you don't even have the decency to delay our arrival so we don't have to spend every waking moment up to our necks in bloodthirsty animals!"

I admit I did flinch when she jerked upright, but that was all I did.

"I am _not_ a _soldier_, I'm a _scientist_, and throwing myself at ugly aliens who all want to kill me is not my idea of doing something constructive with my time!"

I crossed my arms. "Okay, so what would you rather? You're a Spartan, Tori, welcome to the real world. What few places remain unaccosted do so because people like you and I – and those Marines you were screaming about this morning, too, by the way – go out there and be up to their necks in ugly aliens who all want to kill us. I'm not the xenophobic genocidal maniacs who shoot at you, nor am I the genocidal parasite who wants to eat you. Why are you taking this out on _me_?"

"Because you _like_ it." She snarled. "You go out there again and again and sometimes it's all I can do to make you come back in. It's almost as if you _prefer_ being shot at!"

I sighed. "I don't _like_ it, per se. But it is what I do. It's what I'm told to do. You'd have a better understanding of that if you hadn't spent so much time locked in that asteroid."

Oops…

She hit me, hard, and I came out of the pilot's chair onto the floor for my trouble. Landing there actually stung more than her swipe had, remarkably, so I picked myself back up and socked her square in the mouth with a fist. It was the only thing not covered in armor, and thus the only thing I wasn't liable to break my knuckles hitting. But, she needed a good knocking, because obviously nothing else was going to get some sense into her.

She staggered back, but her armor had her balanced and braced, so she didn't fall over like I had. I took the opportunity to turn towards the door, hoping I could make it through and out before she came back.

Blessedly, all she did was scream at me… first wordlessly, and then in English. "You piece of Spartan _shit_!"

Okay, I will say I do take exception to being called a freak… it's one of the few ways to really ruffle my feathers. I turned right around where I'd stopped in the hall, and gave her back her glare from earlier. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, though, but I knew I needed to hit back with something, or she'd think I was open for another one-liner.

She, sadly, got there first. Scowling past her newly busted lip – hmm, that'd make her hate me for a few more days than usual – Tori shoved hard into the doorway after me. "I am not a _tool_, and I refuse to be used and thrown away! You want to run into the breach and die, _be my guest_! But I'm not going to follow you there!"

"Would you like me to string you up for insubordination?" I knew it sounded weak, but it was all I could come up with at the moment.

She shot it dead. "You're Section Three, Flint, I'm Section Zero. You don't have authority over me."

"I do now." I informed her, flatly. "When they issued you that armor you've got on and put you on this sloop, that put you back in the chain of command."

I saw her shoulders pull up, but while that usually meant she was about to sling a punch at me, this time that was as far as it got, and her arms remained at her sides. Interesting. "Prison doesn't force you to do things you're no good at."

Wait, wait… huh? Did she actually just tell me she _wanted_ to go?? Maybe I was barking up the wrong tree, then… "I'm not the one to blame, Tori. If you have an issue with your situation, take it to ONI. They're the ones who made you what you are." For a moment I considered telling her what she was – a "piece of Spartan shit" – but for some reason I left it at that.

Seeming to have at long last run out of steam – whew! – she jabbed a finger at my face and said, "Not talking to you anymore." She then shoved past me, and stalked off down the hallway.

I'd have let her pass, even let her get away with pushing, but she'd aimed for my left, and I had to wonder if it wasn't deliberate. I leaned on the wall for a moment, contemplating crushing that deltoid in my other hand. The grimace was sudden, involuntary, and felt like it wanted to become permanent.

I hated being a gimp… but there was nothing I could do about the shoulder, and I knew she knew what she'd done to me just then. The really sad part was that the only viable solution to the icy knives irritation of the injury sent my way was to have her pull the joint up and back, and press a thumb under that shoulder blade. For some reason – must have been a nerve cluster thing – that actually made it quit hurting.

There was no way in hell she'd do that now. Especially not since she'd been the one to deliberately try and cripple me by twisting it to make it hurt. One thing I had learned –blessedly not the hard way, the first time – was that above all else, Tori had a massive vengeance complex. Now how was I supposed to get into my armor? Grumbling through my grimace, I straightened, and turned to follow her.

It wasn't always this bad. In all honesty, it had gotten this way just inside the last three weeks… gradually, she'd begun to grow frustrated with some things – mostly random things I'd forgotten to be bothered by years ago – and finally her first outburst boiled over sometime at the end of the week before this one.

Maybe it was something she'd ate… it was hard to tell if I was grumpy because she was taking most of it out on me, or if I was just grumpy for the same reasons she was. But, like her, I had no one to take it out on besides the only other occupant of the sloop… and when we hit dirt, those unfortunate New Covenant that we'd been sent to kill. The slew of complaints that she'd scream about varied… the addition of not outlining what they were was a new one, though. I honestly didn't remember what that anonymous gripe was about.

Doubtless we'd get out there on the surface of this world – an outer colony that had missed being glassed when the old Covenant came for Earth – and she'd rack up a few dozen more things to fuss over before it was overwith. There were times when I wished she'd get socked in the head by a Brute. It would earn me some silence, at least, if it didn't somehow rewire her soggy brains and make her think straight again.

Pulling the Mark VII out of the containment unit one-handed was alright – trying to don the stuff that way was a nightmare. Sitting down to get the legs on, I was ripe for invasion when the cat darted into the room after me and bounced like a wound spring right up and onto my lap… which at the time was a narrow little wedge of space between my tucked knees and forward-leaning torso.

Somehow, the cat fit right up in there, causing me to reflexively sit straight. "Do you mind?" I demanded, cross. Lifting the tabby off my legs, I set her aside, and bent back over. "I'm busy."

Meow.

Given the sudden nature of the foul mood infecting the sloop, I hoped it wore off as quickly as it had set in, because I had already lost my patience for it. Mentally I promised myself that if Tori sniped at me one more time I'd push her ass out the airlock and fly off without her. I worked well enough alone, after all… and whenever I didn't, the Elites usually sensed it and came and got me.

Meow.

It was a crazy system, but it worked for me… having Tori around certainly wasn't. Not really. At first she'd been a little rusty with things like the guns, but it seemed almost as soon as she'd gotten back into the swing of it, she'd gotten a temper I'd never seen on her before, and now we fought with each other almost as much as with the enemy.

Meow.

Sitting up, I looked over at the cat. I'd somehow managed to always forget to ask Tori what the runt's name was, so she was just "the cat" to me. This after six months outside that lab I'd sniped at her about earlier. Being a brown tabby made her current environment ideal for hiding in, and there were days when I never saw her at all. But then, the sloop had not been designed with cats in mind, so there were places innumerable for a creature her size to sneak into and sleep. Dropping a hand over her head so it obscured her vision and flattened her ears, I curled my fingers around her little skull and pulled upwards. She adopted a forced smile as all the skin on her face followed my retreat. Repeating the motion a few times, I let her flop over onto her side and purr there as much as she liked. She just adored that treatment, for some reason, and it would make her purr loud as a buzz saw every time.

Now was no exception.

The cat sated, I returned to my unnecessarily arduous task of pulling into the Mjolnir. It would have been a faster, more efficient process if Tori hadn't torqued my shoulder, but though impeded, I was not deterred. I'd get into it… just… slowly.

.

TORI-138

There's a good reason for this.

There's a reason, logical and well defined, for everything.

I was mad as hell, and I was going to break his bastard neck. Unfortunately, even I had forgotten why by the time I'd made it to the airlock, so I felt quite empty and a little foolish as I stomped angrily down the footramp to the gravelly soil at the bottom. Oh, I was still quite mad at him, and I knew that somewhere in my absentminded brain there was a good reason why – I was not terribly prone to senseless tantrums, was I? – but I'd gotten so busy being mad that I'd let go of all the logic behind the sentiment.

I just wanted to kill him, and be done with it, so I wouldn't have to be mad anymore. There was the theory that maybe if I left things be – forgave him, even – he'd only turn right around and go be irritating again, and then I'd remember everything I'd just forgotten, and it would once again be the 'last straw'… on and on and on. Honestly, I was almost ready to believe all I needed was some chocolate and everything would be better again… after a couple solid weeks of nearly nonstop fighting with the guy – and boy was he better at it than I was! – I was almost ready to think it wasn't really him doing it to me at all.

I just needed some chocolate…

Okay, okay… I'm a lousy Spartan II. That's no excuse for lousy relations, however. My main issues were not on the battlefield, nor were they in tactics or logistics. No, no… leave it to me to have problems being a _people person_, after pretending for all I was worth for _thirty years_ to be a civilian! Wow, was I an asshole.

Out ahead, I saw the first Marine – he had a lot of funny looking stripes on his shoulders, so he had to be the ranker in charge – appear out of the broken woodwork, and turned his direction. In the ten or so strides it took me to make the gap, my thoughts continued. I began to reiterate the argument of the morning through in my head, running over parts of it again and again just to make sure I had psycho-analyzed every little aspect of it.

Surely it wasn't me. Surely, surely.

Right as I got to the Marine and stopped walking, sparing a moment to take him in – raggedy little officer, he was! – I went over the last bit before I'd stuck my finger in his face and stalked off.

Like a two year old.

The Marine saluted me, erroneously thinking me of some considerable rank. My armor was markless, as far as he could tell, though it was still unquestionably Mjolnir of some breed. "Captain Hicks, sir, glad to see you."

I pondered the real meaning of Flint's threat to have me 'strung up'… and if he would really be that kind to allow someone else to do it to me… when I had a mental hiccup. I stared at the Marine for a full minute before I realized he'd not just called _me_ Captain Hicks, but rather introduced _himself_.

"Hello?"

I shook my head, feeling very out of sorts. I'd always let Flint take care of interactions like these in the past, preferring to be the mysterious 'strong, silent type' in the back who never said anything. Right now I was really feeling it, too. "Sorry… was listening to the comn. Come again?"

It was a lie, yes, but the look it earned me! It was absolutely priceless! He gave me something of a cross between astonishment and horror. "You can hear that? I guess that means I don't need to fill you in on much, then, do I, sir?"

In a hopeless scramble to save my ass, I was about to laugh when instead I suppressed it under a stern-sounding harrumph. Or I hoped it was stern-sounding. I was _so_ not good at this! "Wrong channel, Captain. I'm not listening local. Fill me in anyway."

He quirked a brow. "Oh… well… Brutes came down through the throughway two days back, wiped out our forward base. But they didn't get everybody all at once, and you could hear the screaming a mile away. We tried to hammer them back, but it was as if they came pre-fortified. We lost nearly every tank we had in that sting, and we didn't even break their forward lines."

Most of that went over my head.

It wasn't even particularly dense military jargon.

I sighed.

"Yeah, it's bad. Which is why we were hoping you'd get here quick." Hicks said, misinterpreting my sigh.

Maybe I was good enough to bluff and blunder my way through this, but I was by no means being brought 'up to speed' by this exchange. Indeed, I'd likely need to go and see the mess he was trying to tell me about in order to get anything remotely like real intel on it. Maybe I ought to have paid better attention to the exchanges Flint always had in my stead, so I'd have a better understanding now he wasn't here.

And that's about when I realized he _wasn't_ here. I backed up a step, turned bodily halfway around, and turned my head the rest of the way, for a moment puzzled what could be the hold up. Flint could be stiff sometimes, but he'd never been _slow_. Not even when a Brute had picked him up by his left arm and slung him into a crashed Phantom. Flint was many things – irritating among them – but never once since knowing him had he _ever_ been slow.

At anything.

"Sir?" Hicks asked, puzzled.

"Wondering where my backup is." I answered, the words out just barely before I recalled a likely reason. And then I kicked myself mentally so hard I almost did it physically. At the time I might have gloated a little, but now… now I'd cooled my irrationally hot head somewhat… I really ought not play off his weaknesses like I do. Poor guy probably hadn't seen it coming, either. Or, if he had, he'd thought that even pissed off at him he might could trust me not to wring him in half.

Boy had he been wrong. Considering the fact that he hadn't come out of the sloop yet, he might not come out at all. Or, if he did, he'd be dead to rights once we actually hit the battlegrounds. Or, worse yet, he'd never forgive me the slight and make sure I felt it once we hit the battlegrounds.

I was… am… a lousy Spartan II.

.

ANUNA-01

"Investigate the surface," they said. "Attempt to determine why it moves the way it does," they said. "Return any relevant data you procure from the planet to your ship and send it to Command as soon as you have it compiled," they said.

Might as well have asked me to explain to them why Humans do not have ditigrade legs. Gah. Of all the missions, despite the feeling in my guts, this one had to have screamed the loudest of math and boredom. Major math, quantum being the one-plus-one end of that spectrum, for perspective. I was not particularly fond of that level of math… Humans called those people 'scientists'… and even then, one had to be a special kind of scientist to really go that deep.

Personally, I would have by far rathered being sent to certain doom through a raging furball in the atmosphere to the surface of an embattled world where Brutes awaited to shoot down my dropcraft and if I survived the crash, to shoot me down, too.

There is more than one way to die, I knew, and I was not appreciating the fact that I had been stabbed by the least honorable of the two methods. I would have dozed on the trip down, but I was already fairly well rested, and the maintenance-begging buzz undercutting the usually soothing hum of the Phantom I was in kept me from even wanting to close my eyes.

Finally, when we were almost there, I heard Rano complain about it.

"I do not know what that noise is, but it hurts my head!"

"Here, here." I muttered, under my breath. If I had wanted to heartily agree with him, though, 'here' would not have been the word of choice. At the moment, I was content to remain viewed as silent.

Still, Igan heard me. Igan is hard to whisper past, even if one is several meters away and there is ordinance detonating all around him. Igan will hear you… no matter who you speak to, what you say, or what ambient noise there is to contend with. He cast me one of those looks that is mainly unreadable but just slightly sympathetic… and gave a half-hearted, "Wort."

You know you are already dead of boredom when you split up laughing at something like that. But all three of us cut up, guffawing and hooting for almost a minute before it tapered off and the somber depression of prior descended again, leaving us without so much as a grin to our names.

Sad… so sad. I sure _hoped_ this world killed me. It would be a great reprieve! Not that I expressly wanted to die, really, nor that I was being dishonorably punished for any particular crime. I was just that bored. Give me a Brute to fight, any day, under any conditions! I would relish it.

But this slow death… there is no justification for it.

.

FLINT-093

I had my MA series on the right, just in case, but I'd left everything else where it usually went. The ammo packs were spread out, the grenades were spread out, even the incendiaries were tucked where their holding hooks were supposed to go. I liked incendiaries; who wouldn't? By the time I'd made the outside of the _Whispers of Fate_, Tori was already talking to the Marine sent back to get us. I'd had a look at the terrain and what occupied it on the way down, so I already knew most of the updated situation, the layout and where we'd be going first.

But I kept my external comn feed off even as I made for their joint locations. For some reason, having my shoulder cranked for me and then having to figure out how to get into my Mjolnir anyway – and now it was throbbing – had put me into one of those almost quintessential Spartan moods. There was enemy, I was gonna kill it. And the Marine spotted me coming and he backpedaled right out of my way without me even having to ask. Tori wasn't as quick, so she got shouldered aside. I kept going.

The icon for comn chatter in my HUD blinked at me, but I gave it only as much attention as it deserved; note its presence, then look past it at more important things. Ahead, through the ruins of a building I couldn't see all the way through from the sloop's perspective, was a steep gradient hill with a line of ragged shelled-out buildings on the top. Between them and me was a roadbed, graded flat against the hillside and making the cut to the top a difficult one at best.

I was not in the mood to be impeded by steep grades or cut roadbeds.

I stepped out of the first building onto the road, marched myself across it to the other side and – remarkably I'd aimed myself squarely at a maintenance and access tunnel – right into the side of the hill. The metal grill gate had been long since blasted to twisted shrapnel, probably more likely by the human side than the enemy. There was sunlight on the other side, but I could already see the cross-way junction in the middle. Perhaps it was underground access to the building directly above it.

Reaching that, I kept straight. The tunnel itself was dark, the overhead lights present but either off or broken. I didn't need their help, but I offered a few half-seconds of thought to the function and use of artificial lighting. Once I made the other end of the short tunnel, I found myself facing a massive, smoking crater. The hill had been cut out again, and that half of the building's shells were gone completely. If the material had not been blown to the next county, then it was likely vaporized and nobody would ever find it again.

That was okay with me.

I circled the near edge of the crater to avoid needing to descend to the very bottom and then climb back out the other slope, and stepped up over what I guessed had once been a traffic impediment. The concrete sphere was bigger around than I was tall, its exterior raggedy and pocked by glassy little needle-holes and torn at by what was quite obviously grenade shrapnel.

It had been embedded in the ground when whatever artillery had struck, so it made a dandy little step that got me up and out of the crater proper and back onto street-level… which was higher than the road I'd just crossed. The byway ahead cut between an arch suspended between the two buildings on that edge of the crater, but the arch was holding itself up now and both buildings were reduced to freestanding rubble. Anything flammable was long since gone, so that left twisted metal, shattered rock and crumbling crete for as far as the eye could see. Aside from the smoke curling off the hot soil in the crater, though, I had not seen any fires.

That changed when I stepped under the arch, and out into the field beyond it. It had not been intended as a field; rather, this was a dense stretch of city proper. However, it had been rigorously shelled, then whatever was left standing had fallen over or been pushed over by what looked like tanks. Tanks, and tank fire. Mortar sign was everywhere, pocking even the insides of the larger craters. That made me think the place had been strafed from orbit before the troops had dropped in, but aside from the cuts, gulleys and humps of broken rubble, there was _no_ cover.

There were splashes of what looked like blood – and a couple of colors of it – but no bodies. Not even NC bodies. I kept walking. It took about ten minutes, but I finally reached the far side of the field of rubble back to the next shelled building, and past that I saw my second Marine for the day. That he was dead made little difference to me. The long, steel-colored rods sticking out of his chest that had been machined down to vampire stakes was what got my attention.

Brutes are not necessarily good shots with that particular weapon, and if this man had been close enough to earn that many spikes – there were six of them – without being simply stabbed by the blades on the fore of the barrel, then things had to have been pretty harrowing, to say the least. Harrowing for the Marines… harrowing for the Brutes.

Already I knew the fighting here was brutal. And I'd only seen one body.

Deeper through the remains of more structures I began to see more signs of habitation, some of it dead, some of it not. I found a medic right as he finally gave up trying to resuscitate a comrade, and he watched me go by. I saw him grab his radio without wiping his bloody hand off first, and I saw his mouth move, but while I knew he was probably calling me ahead to the fore teams, I didn't bother to turn the comn on to hear what he said.

Reaching sight of the first Marine with his gun in hand and shouldered – it was pointed down, but it was still butted to his shoulder – I finally sent my hand over my own shoulder and brought the MA6C down into my other hand. When the grip hit my palm, my fingers closed around it reflexively, but I had to hold the whole weight of the gun with my right for a moment longer as my entire left arm twinged painfully in response to the impact.

Damn… I was getting old.

Finally, when I could see more than one live, armed Marine at once, I flicked the externals on, and the sound of gunfire a few blocks up came through. Closer, I heard someone screaming in agony, someone else trying to scream over the top of them, and closer still… I heard feet.

_Whatta watta watta watta_.

I stopped walking, and stood still for a moment. It had been so long since I'd heard that sound… it registered in memory as familiar, but I couldn't place what it belonged to other than feet. Human feet, yes, but… standard issue combat boots just don't go watta watta. Not on dry, pebbly concrete surfaces, at least.

Finally, one of the Marines near an alleyway entrance jerked as if stung, spun his rifle out of the alley and punched himself in the face with a salute. "Colonel, sir!"

_Colonel_? I admit, I was puzzled.

What came out of the alley answered all the questions at once, so I started walking again.

The dirty golden visor turned instantly to take me in as I approached, the high domed shape embedded into a cranial ring of dented, dun-green armor that I knew instinctively was not Mjolnir. He drew his shoulders back, the armor over his forearms making it look like his fingers came right out of his ulna rather than owning any wrist at all… one glance at the pocked, worn stenciling over his upper arms told me who I was looking at.

I half wondered at the coincidence.

I knew this one. I stopped again, this time about six paces away. He saluted me, and visibly let out a breath. I saluted back. "You got short." I said.

He laughed.

"Need a hand?"

"If it's yours, yes, sir." He was, admittedly, a smaller, more compact, next-gen little guy, but he was no less the Spartan that I was. In fact, being a next-gen type, he could probably outstrip me nowadays. Me being… old… gimpy… whatnot. I wasn't going to tell him that, though. He was Spartan-249… we'd met back when I still ran with the 51st, so he probably thought it something of a surprise to see _me_, specifically, given that all Spartans can tell when an MIA is sincere or not.

That I'd never been MIA was beside the point… even ONI couldn't cover up that broadcast fast enough to justify saying I was merely "missing". And here I was… and I knew that that prolonged pause meant he really _was _staring at me.

I crossed my arms under my rifle, tipping my head at him. "Got something else to say, Andy?"

He shook his SPI-clad head. "No, sir. Just… you look good, sir. Glad to have you with us."

"That's nice." I decided, trying to figure out how Command had failed to mention his presence here. Where was his team? SPI troopers never ran by themselves. "Where's the team?"

I saw his shoulders drop about a centimeter. Oh, bad news. Not what I needed. "Dead, sir. They shot us down… we fell out of slipspace here, so…" he waved a hand at the rubble behind me. "This is sort of our fault."

I shook my head. "New Covenant is nobody's fault, son."

"Aw, Chief." Andy complained. "Please don't call me that."

I laughed, and in passing him, patted him on the shoulder. "Come on, kid, let's have a look at your little mess."

"Yes, sir." He turned on a heel, and followed me.

"Command didn't tell me you were here." I mentioned, making my way up the surprisingly intact alleyway. Urban warfare really wasn't my forte, but I'd take shelled buildings over trees any day. It was better than worse. "Intel on the ground was spotty, so they told me to reach the forward Marine base and contact their commander."

"Intel on the ground is always spotty where the Covenant are concerned, sir." Andy informed me, tacitly. "Every time we send something out, they set up a shielding hood and then we have to go and knock it out. Bit of a merry-go-round down here, sir."

"Understood… what's the fighting look like?"

"The Marines are getting butchered, sir. Brutes don't have much of a foothold but they've flattened much of the terrain and what they do manage to grab they hold for all their worth." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shrug. "I've been helping out as much as I could, sir, but… it's just not enough."

"Which is what I'm for." I finished for him, coming up to the top of a rubble bluff and pausing at its peak to take in what it had to show. From there I could see past the next row of buildings and down the hill, where there was a bit less cratering and a bit more tank-fire markings, and interspersed in the woodwork were the creatures in question. The rattle of gunfire reached me even with the interference from the buildings.

"Sir, if you don't mind my asking… did you come alone?" Andy ventured.

"Nope." I answered. Right as I did so, a little green dot appeared in my motion tracker, on approaching vectors. I saw Andrew turn around halfway, and look behind us. That dot was Tori, playing catch-up, this time more literally than usual. She was almost always in the back, following me around, picking up the slack I left, rather than out front plowing out her own trench like a normal Spartan II would have.

I had my standing doubts she was really there to back me up this time, though. If she shot at me, however… she would not be the one to make it back to the sloop. I might be a rotting old gimp, but I was by far better at this than she was and we both knew it.

I'd have to explain it to Andy if it got to that, though. Poor kid.

"Who's this?" I heard her say, when she finally stopped walking.

"Ma'am." Was all Andy said. He hadn't said anything more – and he wouldn't – until he understood more about what he was seeing. Her Mark IIX Mjolnir was markless… for a reason. Unlike all the other Spartan IIs to make it to the service end of the war, she did not have a rank. That would come with time. Even little Andy – okay, so the guy was like thirty five or so – was in a position above her. He just didn't know it yet.

I felt a set of knuckles knock softly into my back. "Hey, you ever going to turn your damn comn back on or what?"

I could almost _feel_ the weird look Andy was giving her. I smiled. Doing my best to sound unamused – rather, gruff – I answered with, "Nope."

I heard her huff at me, and then the telling smack of a rifle grip striking an armored palm. "Well I need something to shoot at or I'm going to pick a fight I'll regret."

At that point, my frown was genuine. Hmm. Perhaps my doubts of earlier had not been unfounded? I looked at the Spartan III at my elbow. "Lead the way."

"Yes, sir." He, like all III's, had never learned how to walk. The man _sprinted_ every damn where. Now was no exception – and away he went, down the bluff towards the fighting. Just for the chance to stretch my legs, I sprinted down after him, but I had to keep holding myself in or I'd wind up passing him by. Who was the true faster of us three was still in question, but in something as simple as a sprint, my legs being longer than his simply put me a little ahead of him. If he could pump his faster than I could at a full-out run, though… that would wait to be discovered until later.

If the circumstances commanded it. If it didn't, I doubted he'd do anything but sprint. Behind me, I could hear Tori toodling along after us, keeping up, but probably thinking we were both quite nuts.

I can't honestly say she was wrong.

.

TORI-138

The new guy was wearing something that looked like an early-model Mjolnir outfit with his visor all the way up to his hairline. The overall body design made him look shorter than he was – only about three quarters of a head less than myself – and chunky as all shit. That there was armor over his wrists that made it look like his fingers came out of the ends of his arms, rather than from a hand, helped this look none at all.

But in a way… it almost made him cute.

Okay, so that's not often associated with armor-plated killing professionals, but hey. He had a quick sprint, and I'm not sure how he did it but he had a ruler-straight beeline to the bottom of the hill whereas both Flint and myself were zig-zagging over the rubble. Little zig-zags, but they were there.

On that same note, the little guy made Flint look very overpowered, and much more dangerous. Reaching engagement range, I saw the new guy raise his aim and open up, distracting several of those large, hairy… uh… wait, wait… okay, yeah. Flint calls them Brutes. Sorry, had to remember technical stuff for a moment.

Really… ask me for a chemical formula any day, and I can recite more than a hundred of them off the top of my head. But battlefield lingo? Army slang? Bleh! Not my thing. Although, in their defense, I took one look at the I-infested real name for the creatures and decided that "brute" was a hell of a lot simpler to say and remember.

Back to topic; Flint hit behind him, swung left wide and hammered down the first target without pausing his own sprinting momentum. I'd never known him to sprint before… he'd run, he'd toodle, he'd even crawled over a mile to infiltrate somewhere that I wound up doing most of the shooting at, but he'd never actually _sprinted_ until now. Didn't really know he could, given that he obviously preferred not to. Learn something new every day!

I was strung out from our formation in the back – following by intent, not necessity – and I decided to swing right, since our little brother was taking up the central focus and Flint had gone left.

I made a mental note to ask him why he seemed to gravitate in that direction all the time… and while I was at it, to ask why he sometimes looked like he'd get confused which hand he wanted to use for something. He could be strange, some days.

Cutting to the right, I wound up behind another shell of a building that looked like part of a manufacturing plant, and there was no immediate enemy presence in the area. Instinct made up for a lot of my lack, so I followed it down the wall to the next available alleyway and cut down that direction, leading with the barrel of my own MA6C. Flint's gun looked like it got used. I took very good care of mine – mainly for terror of breaking it when I'd need it most – so mine always looked good as new.

Darting headlong into the striped shadows laying all down the alleyway, I broke out from the brickwork back into an open area that had an overturned forklift in the middle of it. Processing yard. Been in one that was functional, once… passing through it.

On the left, since I'd gone so very far to the right to cut around, was where the majority of the fighting was happening, but I could see the new guy plainly and I could hear Flint. One thing about him – he's not subtle. Not unless he really wants to be. And then… well, I'd yet to witness that side of him so I can't say.

I'd turned my barrel to catch the unshaven savages in a crossfire when plasma slapped against the back of my turning shoulder, and I spun back around to see where that'd come from.

There was this hairy sausage pointed at me… I don't know why, or where it came from, but I have never liked being _pointed at_. I blew the hand off the end of the Brute's arm before ruining his face for him, knocking him on his ass before the little things… um… Grunts, they're called… at his heels could respond.

But boy, when they did, did they! I tucked into a turning roll, came out of it in the middle of the fray, and lurched sideways into a full-on run. Now, I love my armor to death. Flint has told me I'm the only active duty Spartan II without a single scar on my hide… I'd like to keep it that way.

So far, in Flint's case, the only place he _doesn't_ have a mark is on his face. I'm told a bunch of my creed have a habit of knocking their teeth into shit and getting badges for their trouble. I hope I never do that, either. But when I came back up to my feet, I was dizzied, and I stumbled backwards a whole step.

In the same instant something as big around as my head and as bright as the sun zipped past where I'd just wavered away from.

I shrieked in alarm and surprise, but the shoulder-cannon round (Sorry, I can't remember what Flint told me those were called. They weren't on the last op) was past me and the following rounds were slow enough that I could see them ahead of time now I was paying attention to that. The shooter was one of the little ones… the Grunts… and all his friends were peppering me with their C-shaped plasma guns, trying to make me dance.

I was not in the mood to dance. Flint was mad at me, I was mad at Flint, and here I was in the middle of the biggest anger management session in all of Creation and I wasn't exploiting it properly. Must fix that.

I rolled my MA6C around (am very familiar with that tidbit, by the way, it's stenciled into the gun and I field strip it all the time) and unloaded the first three-round spray into the air in front of them. Flint had taught me that – when overwhelmed by Brutes, duck for cover. When overwhelmed by Jackals, duck for cover. When overwhelmed by Grunts? Spray a few random rounds at them and if one of them panics, then all of them will and you're more or less in the clear until someone gets them turned around and straightened back out.

It only worked partly – having that Brute I'd knocked down so close to them evidently either gave them the courage to stand up to me or they were scared enough of him being angry at them that they got the courage from somewhere else. But, it did distract them from the constant fire and gave me time to aim.

On the fly – when not unbalanced – I'm pretty good at the MA doing headshots. And while only a _few_ Brutes do not have shielding units, _none_ of the Grunts do. Couple rounds through the skull, dead alien. In the span of about four heartbeats I had laid all of them out, even ducking the cannon-wielder's fire. The thing hit the dust still glowing like a fiend, so I surmised it still had live rounds in it.

Best to use those up, Flint had said, than let them lie. The enemy is annoying, but they are not stupid, and will come back behind you and pick it up again to use on you later. So I began to stride forward in a mincing, sideways zig-zagging manner almost as soon as I'd dropped the cannon-wielder. I dropped another Grunt that tried to jump for the big gun, then pitched that magazine, snatched out and slammed in a new one, jacked the action bar and focused on that Brute.

Or what remained of him. I pegged four three round bursts to pop his recovered shielding, then a final one through his own skull to end his rein over my problems. That done, I took a kneeling step to claim the glowing gun, standing back up again as I continued forward.

Immediately, there were no more. Just the twenty or so Grunts and the one Brute. So I turned around, trusting the little blue donut in the bottom of my HUD to tell me when it was smart to turn back again.

I was downrange of enemy territory, after all, and staring a shitload more enemy in the ass. I tossed my MA over my shoulder, hung on for an extra second to be sure it caught in the catching hooks, then shouldered my new toy, and bled rounds into the rear of the assaulting enemy troops.

_Phou, phou, phou, phou, BOOM, phou, BOOM, phou, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!_

So on and so forth. The lightplay was pretty spectacular, as was the blood spray and the anatomical separation at the cellular level. Bits of it I actually saw shredding in-flight, bits of it I never saw but was sure had vaporized outright. Having a superheated gas detonate under you… or on you… would do that. The intensity of the impact of the pressurized ordinance was even enough to break the shielding of all of the present Brutes, but I did cringe when I heard a human voice holler in protest.

Hopefully that cry wasn't my fault.

The toy was empty, though, so I dropped it, reclaiming my MA and proceeding to mop up the ones still un-charred enough to wriggle after the last detonation.

Gunfire crackled in my direction from the other side too, and now the crowd was thinned I could see Flint mowing them down from his side, and off his flank was the little guy, covering for one Marine who was dragging out another. White-hot steel spikes whistled past my head from one protesting Brute, accepting round after round into the chest without much more response than being hammered backwards.

Pigs, I'm told, have this thing called a shield. It's made out of gristle and callous. You can put rounds into that shield all day and all it will do is give the pig expensive acne and a real whoop-ass case of pissed-off-ness. If my friend the Brute had a chest shield, then I was not going to waste ammo by punting him breathless until my magazine was empty. Raising my aim, I took a chance and riddled his face with my next burst right as his long, dog-like mouth opened to roar something likely obscene at me.

He dropped like a rock, and the next (I didn't know until later, I _swear!_) two rounds of that final three round burst (I'd used two) went past his snout through open air.

The last one down, I saw Flint standing there with his MA pointed at the ground. I knew he was watching me, probably gauging how well I was doing, as usual… but he jerked back with sudden imposition as his shielding flared up visibly.

That's when my comn line finally clicked green; _"TORI!!"_

"Sorry!" I called back… but he'd stuck the rifle into his shoulder already, and I ducked fast under some reply rounds with my hands on my head. My rifle went up there, too, but I doubt it helped me much. "I _said_ I was _sorry_!!" I shrieked, ducking to the side and hoping there was cover there.

That was, blessedly, all the ammo he granted me, so it ultimately didn't matter. Even if he'd hit me, the rounds would not have reached my armor, either. Maybe that was the point. Maybe he was just really that mad at me.

Maybe he was reconsidering the whole court-martial thing and had decided to do me himself… while I'd been shot at before, I'd always imagined I was on the winning end of each battle we engaged in because Flint was just that good at this game. Having to go toe-to-toe with the guy in a gunfight was frightening, even just on principle. In practice? Might as well eat my own sidearm and save myself the trouble.

"That's the last of them here." That was from the new guy… I recognized his voice, because it was a soft tenor, but I still hadn't gotten what his name was. Or hell, a rank would do for me. Something to call the guy besides _hey you there_. "Fifteenth is calling for backup over on the south ridge. They've brought up a couple of tanks."

"Which way's south?" I heard Flint ask. Looking that way, I could see him looking around at the ruins of the city, but even I couldn't tell where a 'ridge' was, so… yeah, which way _was_ south? Forgive me for not having a compass in my head. Or one on the HUD, for that matter. On an asteroid, there are no polar regions, so south is a nonexistent metaphor used to mean 'down', or 'bad'.

South is not a direction, to me.

The little guy stuck a stumpy looking arm out and pointed, catching Flint's attention with the gesture. "Going up that way, sir?"

"Yes." Very blunt, to the point. So very like him. I wondered what it was that made fielded Spartans be of so few words. I won't claim I'm terribly talkative, but I can't recall the last time I answered a question with a single word, with no intent to add anything more until further prompted.

Flint started walking. I let my shoulders drop, the MA in my hand long enough that it almost touched the ground beside my boot. Damn, I hated this. Go here, shoot at that, make sure it's not wiggling anymore, give it some more ammunition if it is. Move on, repeat.

But I followed the guys anyway, well aware that that was why I was here. And if I didn't follow Flint, he would probably abandon my ass somewhere. It was as effective a kill shot as putting a magnum to my forehead. I needed him, and okay, I admit, there were a few times when we got along _really _well…

But damn, I hated this job.

.

ANUNA-01

It was beautiful. The fallow forest had gone for so long untouched that there existed a kind of symmetry between the underbrush and the towering stands of trees. I mean… nary a trunk less around than twice my height! I could not hope to encompass a trunk in my arms, and on the bigger ones, perhaps not even a quarter of a trunk.

Rano was still looking up, grinning, muttering to himself as he took it all in. Deep, dark, rich green, vibrant foliage with a hinting of some bioluminescent accents here and there. I could not tell if it was fungal moss or some kind of fern, but I would have to go and look eventually, just because it was so very fascinating. I had never been in a forest like this one before. The trees on the Halo arrays were old, but _this_ place looked to predate everything else.

I do not know how to properly express the wonder… or the sense of scale and depth… trying to take it all in, I felt like an insect before gods, those mighty trees seeming to look down at me and struggle to see something so small as I. Looking up in reply, my balance wavered, and I had to look down again or risk falling over backwards into a plant that might or might not be tolerant of that. If I happened to stick myself into a fern that happened to be a nettle first thing, I knew the trip would be spent grouching.

And while beforehand, I was considering just ignoring everything and being very narrow-minded for a while – mainly out of spite for having given me such a terrible mission – I found as I took in the surface of this strange, exotic world, that there would never be such a thing. I would be rambling on like a lovesick romantic for years about this place, I felt sure. There was just no other way to say it… it was _beautiful_.

Recapturing my breath, I began to wade through the nodding ferns going in a more or less random direction. Due to the thick forest cover, there was no real way to scan anything ahead of time. So my guess was as good as anyone else's, and any old direction would do for the moment. One thing just about all breeds of plant have in common – they shield against scanning instruments like nobody's business. Get a stand of trees in place, and not even infrared will be able to tell you are there.

Igan pushed off after me first, casting a word at Rano to distract him from the siren's call and remind him why we were here. The sky, where I could spot it through the canopy, was a lovely shade of variegated lilac-on-periwinkle, making it a mockery of all other world's sunsets. If there was nothing unlovely about this world, it would be a marvel indeed.

Not even any indigenous predators to spoil our day! How strange, actually. On that note, I finally looked down, and saw the soil through the patchy leaf litter. Where were all the leaves? Should not such a forest as this have a leaf bed so thick the dirt itself might never see the light of day again? Indeed, I almost wondered if I had not been struck out upon a trail made by feet that left no tracks. The soil was fairly loose, suggesting it was blown or stirred by wind, rain and roots, and occasionally ruffled by the low-hanging leaves of the ferns I was walking through.

But while my tracks compressed in almost perfect renderings of the bottoms of my combat shoes – I could even tell where the sole had been worn smooth and where it had not – and was a good inch deep… there was _nothing else_ imprinted into the dark brown earth.

That, I admit, was cause for alarm. My head snapped up, and I took a brand new look at the surrounding stand of towering giants. Nothing moved but the wind, a very gentle suggestion of a zephyr, broken as it was by all the treetrunks in the way. A good, strong wind current could not get going down here, understandably, not unless it was a gale force and it rode on the head of a storm large enough perhaps to topple one or two of these monsters.

Ahead, as I rounded the fifth tree, I finally spotted such a victim. But the nature of its demise drew me up, even stalling out Rano and Igan before either could run into me.

That tree was – I will measure for you – _fifteen meters thick_ _in diameter_, and had broken off like a twig. It had struck several of its fellows on its way down, wrenching branches bigger than I was from their places and casting them to the ground. The silence of the scene before me screamed in protest of the context, certainly, but it was undisturbed. Like a photograph of a battlefield in action. People dying, people not dead but a half-inch from their doom, people casting death to others, all frozen. Still. Silent. Nothing moving.

It was a break from the beauty, surely. Like stepping from a wondrous dream straight into a nightmare. It wasn't just that the tree was down. In fact, the towering spires of sharp, shattered wood standing free of the tree that had grown them, still attached to the trunk, some bent over in massive clumps of curled fibers, looked normal enough for a fallen tree that had not died and started to rot before it fell.

That aspect looked normal. I was okay with that.

But the near side of the trunk… some _thirty meters_ from the base… it had been _burned_. Not just casually struck by lightning, not at all. Not like that. I mean explosions of massive amounts of ordinance, high-reaching flames with a chemical root, I mean _warfare_ at the modern level type burned. There was wood missing. Enough for me to crawl into the hollow and not fall back out if the trunk were to stand back erect.

_That_ was what was frightening to see.

And while there was nothing to claim as much, I was ready to suspect and then believe that that impact was what had knocked this Kaidon from his place, and laid him down forever. It looked like the tree had started to buckle in that spot, somewhat, but hadn't finished breaking there by the time it was done landing on its side. That tree's demise had lent a long, carved-out, raggedy hole for the sun to come through. It left the entire scene lit bright as day and obvious to all who looked that way.

The gloom around us only shadowed all the more in contrast.

"What did that?" I heard Igan whisper.

"I do not think we want to find out." I answered, bearing little more volume than he. When I lifted my Carbine from my back, both of my companions armed themselves similarly. We had just walked through Paradise to find evidence that Evil was here on Holiday.

.

FLINT-093

'The ridge' was just that. All the streets were steep as hell and anything cylindrical or spherical or even pretending to be as much would go rolling hell for leather down to the bottom. The bottom, as it were, was a long way from the top.

My first kill on the ridge was a Brute too busy pegging the Marine line to notice me. I got up behind the oversized bugger and reached over his shoulder to stick my armored hand over his snout. With my other elbow embedded in the back of his neck, I pulled on that snout, partly upwards as I brought it around. Unprepared for my attack, the motion snapped his neck.

He dropped, limply, to the littered street, and began to roll over himself going downhill until he got lengthwise to the grade and stopped. There was a sign over my head that said WATER DRIVE, but I suspected that it being on a pole that was sticking out of a brick wall meant that it was misplaced. The fact that the 'sticking out of' was literal, and not figurative for meaning that it was on a brace bolted to the bricks, also meant as much.

The new Water Drive was moved, quite possibly several blocks, from the original. This, considering that the next several blocks of city had been flattened. My guess was the signpost had gone sailing like a spear until it met the brick wall. Stepping over the dead Brute, I reached up and tugged on the butt of my MA.

Argh, that was getting annoying. I sent my other arm snaking up behind my own head, and fought with the gun being _just_ out of reach for a second before I finally got it in hand and pulled it loose from my back. My left shoulder was feeling better, now, and like usual when that was the case, I had forgotten that that arm was good for shit. I'd slung the MA over my left when I'd gone after the Brute, without even realizing I'd have hell to get it back over and into my hands again because of its placement.

I saw Andy shoot me a look. He waved something.

I chinned the comn, answering with a click.

When a spike grenade whistled over his ducked head and embedded in the wall behind him, he evidently figured it was okay if the enemy heard him ask me his question; I got to hear him grunt as he jerked the ordinance free of the wall, then huff as he flung it back. That spike detonated in mid-air over the heads of some Grunts, missing the original thrower by almost ten feet. Oh well, short fuse. Not Andy's fault. "Something wrong with your armor, sir?"

I blew the Brute in question on his ass with six rounds to the throat, his shields fizzling on the edge of breaking open when he went down. The punishing impact of MA6C rounds was significantly more than MA5B, after all… and they'd dance and swagger for MA5B's. "No." I answered, feeling a little unwilling to explain that I was more or less a gimpy old cripple and I really didn't need to be out here.

How could I say that to him, though? I was his backup! Maybe I should call Command and tell them to stuff it up their ass… they let _Maria_ retire, and she still had both arms! Still, right now was not a good time to be filing resignation papers.

Not that I really knew where to find that sort of thing. I'd have to ask.

"If you say so, sir." Andy was a sharp kid… he was not convinced. But, if he was going to go along thinking I had buggy armor, I'd let him. Really, the armor was still relatively new. It only had five or six dents in it. So far. But I was not about to give him a rundown of my current medical situation, nor was I really feeling that sour enough to call them out and leave because of them.

The shoulder was a liability, yes, and it was weak as hell. But it didn't_ hurt_ right now, so I was perfectly willing to just plug on. Get the job done, maybe go and pick another fight. That was, provided, if I didn't get it cranked for me again.

Which reminded me why I was mad at Tori.

And about then was when the first tank round sailed over my head, screaming like a thing possessed and glowing like a mini sun. External temperature meters swung hard for the hot end, but inwardly my skin didn't even prickle. I ducked anyway. Don't need to lose an ablative coating for no damn good reason, after all. I ignored the smashing impact, the screams of the Marines who'd been unlucky enough to survive within its blast radius, and the crackling warning of a building's remains threatening to come down.

I slung a hand signal at Andy hastily and charged down the hill at that tank. There were a small number of us who had been good with tanks. Good at destroying them, I mean. I could drive and shoot one, sure, but making them erupt spectacularly was a specialty. One I almost never got to employ when on the job. The NC just didn't have the kind of resources the old order had had, and it left them unable to field much of their existing equipment. This, I imagine, was only compounded by the fact that every time the Brutes behaved like idiots an attacked another ship – be it ours or one of the Elite's – with just one of their own cruisers, it would get obliterated.

So they were also running shy on space-worthy troop carriers, as well. Reaching the bottom of the hill far and away ahead of Andy, I used my elevation coming down off the hillside to augment my jump, landing me right on top of the operator's door. In a hatch just behind it, the secondary gunner was sitting, the plasma equivalent of a fifty mounted to shoot at infantry. The gunner squawked at me when I dented in the driver's hatch, an odd sound to come out of a Brute, surely.

Bracing one foot in the dent I'd made, I grabbed the gun and twisted it into that elbow, reaching past it for the gunner trying to fight me for possession of it. Grabbing a hold of his snout, I yanked him forward, bashing his face off the backside of the gun. The force of that single impact had enough power to fully alter the gunner's worldly perception, as he reeled back from me in a dizzy stupor. I could see him flailing uselessly in a rabid attempt to regain his wits before I killed him, but his reaction was too slow.

Getting my magnum off my thigh, I stuck it through his shielding and blew his brains out from within his yawning mouth. That was about when the tank I was on spun around, and the only thing that kept me on top of it was the fact that my other arm was still wrapped around the turret. Wooh! Good thing I'd shot the gunner lefthanded… or that mighta hurt.

Restoring the sidearm to its place, I turned over, letting go of the turret and slamming my good fist into the driver's hatch. When the hinges broke, the latch was a worthless impediment and I tore it off the tank as a whole. From within, the driver snarled at me, trying to get a gun up at me from within those cramped quarters.

Should have just jumped out instead. I dropped a fist-sized block of plastic into his lap, let go, and jumped to the side. I wasn't clear, precisely, but I hit the switch anyway just in case he'd toss it back out on me. He didn't… the Wraith erupted like a volcano, tossing me back up the hill I'd come down.

I hit on my back, and slid about a foot again back down before I caught the pavement and started to get back up. Andy appeared over me and grabbed my bad arm, attempting to help me up. I yanked it from him before he could pull on it, alarmed that my good spree would end so soon… and because of something other than the enemy, to boot.

He took it wrong, though, and backed up. "There's another two, sir." He said, sounding like I'd hurt his feelings.

I cast him a look as I picked the MA off the ground and slapped it once. "Where?" I didn't mean to put him off, but what could I do? He was a good soldier – he'd get over it. Besides which, he'd known I wasn't terribly cozy to be around beforehand. I just had a sense of humor.

Which might be why Tori was in such a tizzy at me, come to think of it.

.

TORI-138

Plenty was an understatement. But the tank fire was starting to annoy the crap out of me when I saw Flint go running fast as he could down that first street to rip the guts out of one of the tanks. Yay, score one, UNSC. I hauled a Marine out from under some bricks and dirt and stood him up – he wasn't hurt, just disoriented. He'd be okay. There had been several others who would not be okay, not with that last round the now-dead tank had fired.

The aliens occupying the street were too numerous to call it a win and move on, though, so I tried to keep my tally running. I was tall enough that the Marines running in front of me didn't get their heads shot off, so I let them sort themselves while I covered for them.

What was going through my head sounded more or less like this; _That one looks like it needs a new paint job, _BANG_, but then, so does Flint most days, _BANG_, sure hope he gets it in gear and gets back up here,_ BANG_, before things get ugly cos I don't know how to do this,_ BANG_, by myself. Speaking of ugly,_ BANG BANG BANG_, that one needs some serious makeup to fix his ugly._ BANG_, and speaking of makeup,_ BANG_, I need to find what happened to my,_ BANG_, chapstick before my lips split open like,_ BANG_, Flint punched me in the mouth or something._ BANG_, that'd make him laugh at me, for sure, _BANG_, little twit_ BANG BANG BANG_, Yeah, take that, you ugly hairball!! This is me being mad! _BANG BANG BANG_, And that, too! Heh. _BANG_, look at 'em run._ BANG_ Damn, I missed!_

Then my guts twisted.

_I need chocolate._

Yes, I was being a whiny little bitch, but I'd gotten addicted to the stuff, and since falling in with Flint, I hadn't even had any coffee to take the edge off. Not that there was no coffee on the sloop – but more because on the days when it occurred to me that coffee would help take that edge off, I didn't ever have time to go and get into it.

Flint didn't drink coffee… for some reason… so he never had a cup I could readily swipe or be reminded by. Which didn't really help. One thing the sloop did _not_ have, was chocolate. And I was just about ready to gnaw on the first brown thing I saw, I was so deprived.

Maybe it was stupid of me to get addicted to something like chocolate… I'm not sure if it was the caffeine it contained or something else, but I could sit and eat the stuff all damn day and be happy as a jay bird. Coffee was… not really my thing, which is why I never 'got around to it' like I had. My clip ran dry so I popped the little lever thing to make it fall out of the gun, and reached behind myself for the next when something overhead went _crunch_. My hand hesitated, and a Grunt got to live because of it, and I looked up.

"Look _out_!" Barely had the last phonetic sound of that last word gotten out of the Marine's mouth before the first brick hit me in the visor, and a moment later I was buried under half a building.

"God, _damn_ this!" I shrieked, now truly annoyed. Gah. Anger management my ass, this was not helping my mood at all. I'd guessed the tank round had shaken the building next to us, but I hadn't realized it was going to topple… let alone do so on _me_. Well, now there really was nothing I could do, now my precious MA was gonna have a bunch of rock scars etched into it.

Gonna have to reapply the damn bluing when I get back to the sloop. Sigh.

I pushed, and pushed, and tugged, and struggled, and pushed. Finally, I worked most of my body free, and to the tune of bent structural steel and crete and glass grinding against my armor, I finally got loose of enough of it to kick out what was now a wall and what had used to be a ceiling, and step back out onto the street.

Slamming that next magazine home, I rained all hell down on those cheering assholes on the next block. They stopped cheering quick like and ran for it. Most did not make cover. About half a dozen Brutes came out from hiding finally, and their Jackal counterparts began that chicken-dance bounding run to follow them out. Most of _those_ idiots did not bring their oval shields with them.

I briefly considered doing like Flint had taught me was smart and dropping the Jackals first, but I was mad and I had a point to make. So first I flung every grenade I had on me at the Brutes, lining them up all the way across the street. They dove out of the way, and one flat out ran the other way, but I got to light them up anyway. When it was all done with, I'd gotten a single piece of shrapnel from my own grenade embedded in my chest armor, and I'd broken my own shielding by standing too close, but of the ones I'd hit, I'd flattened them permanently. Two remained who could get back up, and only one of them was still wearing an operable shielding unit.

The Jackals had hung back for that display, and now got their eyes pecked out by my MA6C. The slicing spikes whistling past me were an annoying noise, but since not a single one hit me… ever… that was all they were. The Brute reloaded, and missed at me some more.

I finished off the last Jackal, checked to see I had six rounds left, and aimed at the natural marksman who didn't seem to get a clue. I mean… I dance when pummeled to death, too, you know. I also light up bright as day when my shields are active and get bothered. Just like everyone else. He _really_ ought to have noticed by now that he was _missing me_.

Idiot.

My rounds hit his shield, bouncing off, one and all. Briefly I considered running down there and picking a really personal fight with the guy, but Flint had been particularly adamant about that part.

Don't.

Annoyed that he couldn't hit me at that range, annoyed that I had murdered all his friends and all his accomplices and most of his cannon fodder too, and quite possibly also annoyed that I'd even survived having a building dropped on me… he must have been annoyed at _something_ that badly, because he totally flipped out, and lost it. He stuck his knuckles on the road bed and charged at me like a mountain ape from Earth.

Roared a little like one, too. Casually, I dropped out the empty magazine and slapped home a new one. Casually, I pulled the action bar back, and let it go at the back so it slammed loudly to the front, first round in the chamber.

The Brute reached up and out, showing me all his crooked, some of them pointy, teeth. I braced sideways, cocked my hips forward and slung my free hand down behind me. Reversing, I completed the arc across under his chin and to his other shoulder, the sound of a metallic screech following the entire motion.

The Brute slammed into my extended arm, gushed hot blood all over me, and slumped away, gurgling weakly. I stayed like that for a moment, feeling affronted that he'd _bled on my armor_… then sighed, and relaxed the stance. Oh, I had bigger problems than the corrosive properties of blood on the mostly ceramic surface of my outfit. I'd sent my combat knife through the armor on this dude's throat.

That was _weapon's-grade steel_, versus _Covenant armor_. Think I was annoyed at the bloody mess? Only a little, now I realized what kind of terrible mess I'd have when I went to straighten out that knife later on.

Yeah. Exactly. I sighed.

MA in one hand, my combat knife in the other, I looked behind me to see where all my Marine buddies had gone. Obviously, Flint darting off to the left with his new friend the mini-Spartan guy meant that I wasn't going to get him back up here any time soon.

So it was me and the Marines for a while. I saw them, nearly all of them, standing up at the top of the ridge looking down at me like I'd displayed just _how it was done_ and they were all awed at the show. I turned and started walking towards them, watching as my shielding picked up and began to charge. _Little bar across the top_, I'd called it. That bar had become my most precious indicator, as when it was out, I started to feel impact again. Like anyone worth their salt in nerve endings, I did not appreciate feeling combat impact.

Reaching the front line around the edge of the building's rubble, I stepped over their Kelly-wall barricade and looked around. Counting faces, I came up with roughly thirty. The ones in back kept moving so it was hard to tell past the twenty-one mark. That was all but seven of the original number, if in fact thirty was correct.

"That was amazing!" One of the closer dudes exclaimed, finally, breaking the pall.

I shrugged. "Got a towel?"

That set them to laughing. "No, ma'am, but I can find something."

"Slimy and annoying, huh, ma'am?" Another put in. That one was a woman. I turned, a little surprised. She'd never spoken up before, and when I finally spotted her I realized why I'd missed her being a girl.

She had a square jaw and blunt features. In full battle rattle it hid her gender perfectly. But she grinned like a girl, and she was grinning, so it gave her away. "Very…"

"Here, towel." The guy coming back announced, tossing a wadded scrap at me. I caught it with the hand holding the knife, and after deducing that it really was not mostly dirt, I handed off my MA to the girl-Marine. Her eyes popped out and her mouth fell open as the mega-sized rifle landed in her hands. Maybe it was the size of the thing… or maybe it was just the fact that a Spartan had handed her something.

Marines are funny creatures that way. Toss a dude an unprimed grenade cos he needs one, he'll brag to the whole goddamned world that a Spartan gave him something. Hell, if you toss 'em a _rock_, they'll tell the same story.

I got most of the blood off of my front – doubtless it was all down my back, too, but oh well – and tossed the filthy, half-shredded rag back to the ground. He'd probably gotten it out of the rubble of what had once been a hotel, after all. That there was anything like it left in this place was a minor miracle. Having wiped off the knife, I slid it back into the sheath I'd hitched under the power housing on my back, and clipped it in place. Then I lifted my MA back from the Marine's hands, raising her gaze back to meet mine.

"Where's the rest of them?" I asked, figuring if they were gonna think of me as Athena – goddess of war – then I might as well play the goddamned role. Be a battlefield badass. I could… but not as efficiently or as jubilantly as Flint.

Flint… damn, if I never saw him again, I would not be surprised. He _lived_ off this shit, and he'd chase the last living NC to the end of the world if he had to, to make sure he got to kill all of them. And I often wondered if it was the fact that they were NC… or if he was just that into the killing theory… or if it was something else.

And I have to admit, I really was starting to suspect that it was the something else option, more and more. Because he'd go after a Flood infestation the same way.

"Up this way, ma'am." Someone from the back of the group said, waving at me so I'd see which direction 'this way' was. "They took it two days ago and we haven't been able to punch through this deep until now."

"Fair enough." Inwardly, I sighed. I could be all they thought I was, so long as I didn't open my mouth. Trying to talk the talk with _Flint_ was hard… he _still_ gave me strange looks from time to time. So trying to be all by myself doing this I felt like a fraud. Like I'd missed the first fifteen years of my life due to the fact that I forgot how to use it all in the following thirty.

Flint, meanwhile, had been learning to perfect all the art of war in those same thirty. Perhaps this was the fulfillment of a destiny, for me, perhaps it was what I'd been meant for, but boy was I really out of my league here. To be fully honest, there had been days on the asteroid when I'd wished I was Flint… where my problems could be solved by shooting them in the head, and I'd never have to deal with the same problems twice.

Where my peace of mind and security was as simple as walking away from the front lines for a spell, and when I was ready, I could walk back to them. But, on the other hand… I was all grown up and had been taught to be someone else.

Someone grumpy as hell at her soldier-boy companion for being what he was, and suffering from chocolate withdrawal like nobody's business.

As the Marines ahead of me began to turn and go in the indicated direction, most of them checking guns and pockets for ammunition levels, I turned back to look down at the girl-Marine and asked a very girl-centric question.

"Got any chocolate on you?"

She laughed, but dug into a breast pocket. "Yeah… yeah, I do."


	2. Secrets Within Secrets

**2: Secrets Within Secrets**

ANUNA-01

Logic demanded we turn tail and run for it. Intelligence demanded we turn tail and run for it. Sanity demanded… well…

But curiosity overrode them all, somehow, and for the first time in my life I think I finally understood what was going on before it happened. I knew we were risking everything to find the origins of that tree's condition, but nobody balked when I stepped forward instead of back. And nobody protested, either.

So forward we went, turning and following the length of the tree to its foot, since there was no way shy of jump packs or grapple lines to get over it. There, we began to see more of the same, deeper into the forest. Massive trees were felled seemingly at random, most of them lying flat but one or two forming steep ramps into the stout branches of a neighbor. We could not even discern what the purpose of their demise had been… shots had been fired at all directions imaginable, it seemed, even after we had calculated the twisting drop most of the victims had employed upon being shot. When a tree is felled – by any means at all, really – and hits fellow trees, what happens is their outermost branches touch each other, and bend. If the tree is big enough to press them out of the way, then the thicker, inner branchings touch, and knuckle together. Sometimes they bind up and hang that way, like the lean-tos we saw.

But most of the time, the bendy branches will want to unbend. Since the stronger branches tend to push harder than the weaker ones, and these are never in uniform placement, the falling tree will roll. One must calculate the strength and springiness of both the falling and the catching tree, of course. The falling tree's branches will want to unbend, too, and will push back on the pushing branches of the catching tree.

So instead of knocking into one another like pins and all breaking at the base to land flat, trees shrug one another off with the flexible armor layer known as their branches. If a defending tree has strong, extra springy branches on the left, and weaker ones on the right, then an attacking tree will get shrugged to the right as the weaker branches on the defending tree are overpowered by the pushing of those on its left. So the falling tree will roll, twisting over to put the impact site of the missile on the bottom when it finally hits the ground.

We saw several that had actually been struck in several places, and some that had buckled and were laying back upon themselves, and a few more who were topless, towering trunks, their bases too strong or too springy to snap off. It made the forest a very interesting place to try to navigate… that someone had used the place as a target practice range was unsettling, considering what the untouched part we'd landed in looked like, but more, what they had been shooting at the trees to make them buckle over like they had was also unsettling.

I would doubtless vaporize if what had hit those trees came down and hit me.

And Rano and Igan would, too, for that matter. Great swaths of underbrush were simply _gone_ in some places, a light dusting of soft ash settled aground where the foliage had been. Walking through this oversized, haphazard destruction zone – many dozens more trees survived untouched than had been dropped brutally – gave me the chills down to my bones. But what could I really do about any of it?

Finally, a very broad, seemingly older cleared area that had some sign of new growth poking out of the edges of it, came up. Stepping out from the edge of it towards the middle where it had been blasted clean, I stopped after three strides. The radius had to be something in the neighborhood of fifty meters, but it was a rough oval. If there had once been a tree in the middle, there was not one now. What had my attention the most, though, was the moss-covered shapes standing out of the forest floor… they were oddly symmetrical, and had flat angles.

That is not to say there were no gently curving angles, but overall it screamed of sentient stone masonry to me. Like something that had been _built_. Flowers with stems and delicate stalks littered the place, and there was what looked like some kind of Human clover in bloom – it was the same color of yellow that G'wi's human had called, 'bright, shoot-me yellow', I noted – along the center.

Otherwise, it looked like nobody had been there, and nothing had moved, in centuries. Or at least for as long as it took moss to grow over everything. It was a little pretty, in its own way. But in the same token as before, also equally as alarming. Cautiously, I stepped out towards an arch that looked like it might have once been a doorway to a structure. It was the biggest freestanding lump of all the stemmy green moss shapes, so I figured it might give me some clue as to what we were really looking at here.

We were here, after all, to find out why the planet and its sun – and those two were all that made up this odd little solar system – would shift in and out of existence on a systemic period cycle of three standard days.

If there were ruins… then beneath them, perhaps, was the technology responsible. I paused when I heard a hard metallic sound at my hooves, and looked down. Lifting my forward hoof, I looked at the track I'd left in the dirt.

Sunlight lanced down from behind my head, and struck the disturbed place.

It glittered.

.

FLINT-093

I mopped up the stragglers – which included a pair of those wormy things we all know and love called Hunters – while Andy picked off the ones up top to herd them in a specific direction. Pushing the last of the enemy – of the ones we could find, anyway – up the bluff to the top of the ridge in-city towards Tori had been an interesting endeavor. It still was being interesting, too, since most NC members are not taught to run when the going gets hazardous.

Herding them, to say the least, was hard to do. Once we got the Grunts moving, though, it was more or less easy enough to make them go where we wanted… even with as many Brutes remained, they were not going to stay behind while the bulk of their forward forces turned past them and fled. Turning their assault face towards the Marines and Tori had been Andy's idea. I admit that giving the Marines the chance to utilize their existing cover and emplacements to the maximum was in a way not that stupid… but Andy had told me that those men often got hammered flat when an army of NC forces came running up the hills towards them.

Dodging through buildings or not, this ground force was being hard on them. I had my doubts… maybe he was just trying to keep us from getting too far from the others, as at the moment, we were some half-mile from where I'd last left Tori.

Maybe that was what had made Andy suggest the idea. SPI troopers hate being alone. Unlike Spartan II's, they cannot readily go solo. Even with me there to augment his position, it hadn't eased those lack-of-a-team jitters, apparently, and he was itching to reconnoiter. Oh, well. In any case, I still got to shoot at them, still got to kill several, and still had to chase them down. I was just going in a new direction, is all… one the NC wasn't particularly fond of going in.

Rather than pressing back their line to their point of origin, I was cutting them off from said point and driving them like cattle to the slaughter right into Marine central, where they had no hope of reinforcement if things went in the Marine's favor this time.

I was trying to take out as many of the Brutes and Jackals as I could, though, just to maximize the Grunt's momentum and relax some of the press they'd have when we did finally reach that line again. A wall of endless Grunts coming at you is somewhat unsettling… but replace them all with Brutes – or hell, replace _half_ of them with Brutes – and any Marine you can name is gonna run like hell the other way and try to find somewhere else to be for a while.

An all-Brute charge is nothing pretty. An all-Grunt charge, on the other hand… well, they're roughly Human-sized and don't carry shielding. That makes them more or less Human, when it comes to taking them out. I'll leave manner and combat experience off the table in this calculation, since most combat effectives don't usually panic in the middle of a battle and Grunts will actually do that.

Brutes, on the other hand, are about a third again as tall as a Human and built proportionately like a Human on steroids. Add in their love affair with the Carbine – more on the nature of that weapon later – and the fact that they _all_ carry shield engines, and suddenly each Brute is the combat equivalent of a LAV. Only, twice as mobile if a little slower.

Lesson in battlefield ethic over; the long and the short of it was, Brutes were a bad thing for Marine health, and I was more or less the _only_ cure for what ailed them. Tori would have been, but she was badly out of her element and only just starting to break back into the fold. No offense to Andy intended, but a single S-III just isn't the same as an S-II.

Which was why they _never_ operate solo.

Which was why I was being cautious with my harassment… I had to keep an eye on my little friend, and pry him out if he got himself wedged somewhere. Coming through the next intersection to make the next block up, I looked for the millionth time at the motion tracker, and for the first time that day, didn't see his little white dot.

Hmm…

"_Chief_!"

Aw, shit. Got himself wedged, time to go get him out. "On my way." I replied, turning up Avenue E to follow the sudden Nav Point my HUD had discovered. That was the nifty thing about Andy… he was a pretty decent hack, and he knew all his suit's systems inside and out… and if he needed something specific he knew how to ask for it. Case in point, advertising his position to my sensor systems despite being outside of sensor range.

I moved it into a swift trot as I listened to him breathe on the comn bud, the manner of each exhalation telling me what he was doing. When he sucked in a fast breath I figured he'd probably tucked a roll… until I heard him choke it back out with a spoken, "_Huff_!"

I moved into a run. That sound meant he'd been fisted in the guts, or had been thrown against something. If a Brute was that close, I didn't have _time_ to hesitate, or my little S-III would die in pieces. Call me sentimental, but I rather liked Andy. Of all the S-III's, Andy had been the only one who'd bothered to talk to me. He was a squinty-eyed little honey-colored guy with a look that claimed he knew what you were thinking even when he really didn't know, but he was polite and soft-spoken and he also didn't seem to mind that I outranked his _Commander_ at the time we talked… he'd been the only kid I'd ever shared a story or two with. The one he picked to tell me in return had been hilarious. I'd savor that… he was a good kid, and I liked him.

Coming around the bend into Loxodonta Drive I finally spotted him, right as he stood against a signpost and folded the thing over. The Brute that had tossed him into it was bigger than _I_ was! Yikes, get caught by the biggest damn ape he could find, why don't he! I barreled in before the ape could follow Andy down and grab him again, so he was home free for a second. The Brute and I went down as one – the thing about Mjolnir being an accelerator suit was never an understatement, after all, and when something that weighs some half-ton gets going real fast, it's gonna leave some bruises, if it doesn't outright break every bone in the body it hits.

Well, when I grappled the monster, we went down. The Brute made the same noise Andy had a moment ago, all the air blasted out of him on impact. Bracing a knee in his gut, I raised my torso and brought a fist down across his face hoping to break it off, but if nothing else at least disorient him.

He kicked me off as if I'd had no effect. I tumbled over my own head, but I came down on my knees almost _perfectly_ balanced, somehow, so I was able to reverse my momentum almost as soon as I hit that point in my roll. Back on my feet, I saw the Brute finish getting up, too, and I knew without needing told that this was going to be a fistfight.

I was not up for a fistfight.

I couldn't _handle_ a fistfight!

Behind the Brute, I saw Andy finally pick himself up, but he only got as far as his knees and a hand, his other hovering just shy of his domed visor as if something was wrong with his face. Being fully clad in SPI armor, though, those motions meant something else entirely. I stiffened, alarm dumping adrenalin into my system.

"_Andy_?"

The Brute swung a hairy fist at my head, leading the swing with the point of a crooked, jagged-edged knife that more resembled a small machete. Rage swept in to replace my apprehension. Somewhere in the deepest part of my soul, I knew I didn't have time to dance with this idiot if I intended Andy to live. The comn was silent… he'd either chinned it off, or it was drowned in the blood he was coughing up. Being beaten until your insides break apart is a terrible way to die.

I did not want Andy to die.

My head dipped under the reaching blade, and my left came up to follow the overshot arm. I felt my fingers sink through the Brute's skin and into the slimy tissues beneath it, blood squirting out over the back of that arm from the crushing grip. My right came up and smashed his wrist, shattering most of his fingers. I yanked him bodily by that arm to unbalance him completely, and rolled my other hand upwards as the machete fell out of his ruined hand.

Catching it, I brought it up and under his arm, slamming it home through his own chest armor. Force of introduction blunted the tip on his shields, but they broke away with just a moment's hesitation, and I felt the blade stab through the metal plating on his chest and bite flesh beneath it. The Brute's eyes bugged out as his lips curled back, but I wasn't done.

Jerking the ragged blade out of him, I slammed it home again in a new place, hammering again and again until he finally quit fighting me and just stood there, too in shock to know he was already dead. Throwing his arm out wide, I finally let go of it, and when he twisted after his retreating shoulder, I seated the butt of that machete in my other hand and slammed it up into the underside of his jaw so hard it lifted him to his toes.

I saw the ruined point burst out the top of his skull before he fell over, but as soon as he was down, I was past him. I curled my arms under Andy's stooped form, jerked him from the sidewalk and rolled him over my good shoulder.

Then I ran.

I did not want Andy to die.

.

TORI-138

First came to us the mother of all Grunt armies. I'd never seen so many in one spot at once in my life! I'm sure some of the others with me had, possibly more than a few, but they were all running flat-out and they covered the road for what had to be a hundred miles back into the distance. They poured out of the side streets and crushed in closer, most of them screaming "we're all gonna _dieeee_!" and similar.

Well, most of them _did_ die, and most of _those_ did so by grenade. Really, who could resist? Talk about using it up till it screamed for mercy… not a single tiny microscopic ounce of those grenades went to waste, as they shredded Grunts without mercy. What the grenades missed the Marines and I made up for in rifle fire, making the end of their road into a bloody suicide.

I don't know why they just kept on coming…

Until I saw what was following them. Over a hundred Brutes, headed by oh about a dozen shield-bearing Jackals. Most of that group was screaming obscenities at the Grunts all while chasing them down, trying to make them stop and be good little NC members again. _I'd_ run if that was coming after _me_, too! Still, over a hundred Brutes all at stinking once… well, long story short they _were_ coming after me. And my combat knife was already ruined to all shit. I began to bleed rounds _over_ the heads of the Grunts rather than into them, desperate not to allow that wall of Grunts to thin before we were ready for those Brutes to get through. The charge might not have been in their battle-plans, but I wasn't going to hand the battle to them for it if I could help it.

Most of the Marines at my flanks followed my aim – the Grunts became more of a buffer keeping the Brutes from ever reaching us, and if we could keep them crushed together for a little longer, we could take out those Brutes before they got to us and made a difference. Spike grenades sailed in at us, making me think we'd need to give them the street… and then one of them shot me in the _elbow_… not sure why… and my aim went high. Three rounds smashed into a high-sailing spike grenade and then they _all_ went off, string-detonated by my shot. I shrieked in surprise as I ducked my head, some of that death-rain hitting our line even as the majority of it came down on the nearest line of Grunts.

I had no idea that shooting a grenade in-flight would do that… come to think of it, I _don't_ think that that works with Human grenades at_ all_. Must be a spike thing, because I've actually shot plasmas before and they don't go off for bullets either.

Most of the Marines made it through the hail alright, but one unfortunate soul took a single shard of shrapnel in a bad place and was dead before he hit the ground. Oops. I wasn't sure who that was but I was annoyed anyway, and I focused on a single Brute for long enough to break his shields… and then a Beret boomed behind me and that guy was down for the count. A couple of Marines focused on a single Brute, broke his shielding, and he too dropped over backwards to the Beret's kiss. So… if that was how it was going to go, I was game for that.

I saw a Brute dancing for impact and I sent him mine, too. There were still billions of Grunts fixing to overwhelm our forward line and more than seventy Brutes when our front ranks met, but they were thinning fast and we'd lost… um… one.

Almost as one, and without anybody coordinating this, we all backed away from our blockade and let the Grunts crawl over it. Some forty or so Marines were still shooting Grunts dead but all the rest of us – I'd counted, and down the one we'd lost I had some two hundred and fifteen Marines and _one_, count him, _one_ ODST. I have no idea how in the world I wound up with _one_ shock trooper, but oh well. He was cute and he was cool as a cucumber under fire and he was a damn good shot.

That was him on the Beret, by the way. QED, damn good shot. He was getting those Brutes at dangerously close ranges for a Beret but oh well. They weren't getting any closer very fast, still pausing to kick Grunts in the ass and fuss at them, and the Grunts in turn were doing more milling than charging… and _no_ shooting.

Why wouldn't they shoot? Even if I'd been chased into a rat's nest I'd still have been shooting in hopes of surviving my flight. Wasn't that the logical, instinctual reaction to such a situation? I was almost sympathetic to the Grunts, though, caught between such a pinching press of hostile forces. I saw a Brute lash out with the blades on his spike gun and orange blood lanced up in a rising arc from his point of impact. _Ouch_. I know Flint can be a hardass some days, but at least he doesn't take after me with a knife! If he had, though… if he'd left me alive after the fact then he'd learn not to do it twice. That was if I felt sympathetic enough to let him _survive_ the affront. Lousy Spartan II I may be, but I _am_ a little self-righteous and I do not appreciate being bullied around just because I'm outranked on all sides.

Maybe that was why he never told me what my stripes ought to look like. I didn't know, so I never painted anything on my armor. It sure kept me in charge over these Marines… honestly, I was finding I liked it. I was good at it, and I was quick to compensate and relay updates. They listened… all of them called me ma'am. None of them questioned my authority _despite_ my markless sleeves. I'd have to ask Flint about it later.

If I survived this engagement. Finally, when the Grunts in back got wise to what the fate of their forward brethren was, and came around the bodies with their guns up and intent to carve a pathway through us with them, I relayed the next update.

"Split off, Alpha team take right, Beta cut left, Charlie and Delta lead them back, split off at the next block and come about to get us from behind! Move!" A grammatically incorrect sentence, perhaps… but that's how it came out of me. All in one breath. And we dispersed like water dividing an army of ants, leaving the Grunts a clear path through uncontested (for the moment) streets.

Boy, have you ever seen a Grunt really _run_?

I darted to the right, since I was already on that side of the street, and went under some hanging traffic lights with Alpha team. We reached our secondary set of barricades, jumped them and ducked under cover. If a Grunt looked our way, they'd see a line of Kelly walls, and nothing more. It'd be a little like we'd simply run halfway down the street and disappeared into the air.

It didn't matter… we'd need their nonchalance towards our noncombative positions to disarm the Brutes behind them. The plan, I guess if there really was one, was to get the Brutes into a pinch. I hoped to get them from the sides and behind, so they'd spend time we'd use to be firing to turn themselves around. One guy can do it on a heel and be turned in a breath. Seventy guys all charging headlong take a moment to all get turned about, and sometimes the guys out front never realize their followers have stopped following.

I was counting on that.

Sure enough, when we failed to fire at the Grunts' flanks, the Brutes failed to fire down on us, likely thinking we'd gone on farther than we really had. Never mind the Kelly walls' presence, or the fact that theirs might imply ours. I don't know if I was lucky or if the Brutes are really that stupid… (again, need to ask Flint) when the majority of the sound of running feet had gone past the second corner, I stood up, raised my rifle and fired the first round.

To my left and right, the Marines all opened up with me. Technically we were shooting at Beta team, and they at us, but that was not really the plan and both sides were hopping the Kelly walls again and moving back up to the intersection we'd abandoned a few minutes before. The pause for breath we'd had had allowed most of the men to get their second wind, too, and for it, most of them came back as if fresh and eager.

That part I liked.

Now, the ODST had hid out on an office roof, so he hadn't moved. But I imagine his aim was mighty awkward since now he was aiming straight (more or less) down from the edge of the roof he'd picked. Trying to move would cost him time and likely make him miss the fight – it takes a certain amount of time to descend forty flights of stairs and run across the street to ascend another forty, after all.

In as much time, myself and the Marines might well rob him of further participation in the battle. Brutes went down in the scissoring pinch as Alpha, backed by Delta, and Beta, backed by Charlie, ran up behind their flanks and pressed in. The density of the rifle fire was enough to snap shields, shatter bones, and pulverize meat, even if most of us really were trying to aim. It didn't matter who I shot at, there were some five other guys also shooting at that same target, and likely an interchanging five.

The Brutes tried at first to turn around and face us, to shoot back, but there simply was no room, no time, and no opportunity. We'd cut them down to damn near _ten_ before they figured that out, and the last _four_ made it to cover.

My MA and I were pretty hot by then. Environmental suit or not… I was sweating buckets, working my ass off like this. The bite of chocolate (quick energy, really) I'd gotten earlier was gone, doubtless, and I knew by the time I got back to the sloop I'd be ravenous as a dog. Running, trotting, sprinting… some minor tucking and rolling, a lot of ducking… and oh yeah, shooting a gun is not as simple as point and shoot. There's kickback, which takes strength and energy to fight back against, withstand, and even adjust for. Then there's the during-shot-fired vibrations sent through the skeletal frame.

Let me add here that _vibration_ is a _therapy_ used on _atrophied_ _muscles_ to _rebuild_ and _stimulate_ them! So being shaken to death is justifiably as tiring as doing real manual labor. Parts of me ached – especially the shoulder attached to my dominant hand, since that's where I butted the gun to. (that'd be my right) And when I held still, I'd shake like a spastic due to the massive over-stimulation each muscle cluster had endured. Really, _really_ working out will make you shaky, trust me. I'd learned that the hard way.

Gods only know how Flint could find the stability to hold a fork after a hard workout. I never could… usually had to eat with my fingers. That or wait a couple of hours. If I took the time to have a hot shower after stripping out of the Mjolnir, I'd be relaxed enough to not be shaking anymore, and I could use a fork. Flint, though… he wasn't particularly bad about it but he usually hated having to shower. Claimed the water made his big scar burn like all hell.

Don't know about that one… don't have any scars to get wet and test that theory on. But while that shoulder would burn, the rest of him'd get itchy, and he'd never really go for longer than three days before he'd finally relent and suffer through it. He was strange in some strange ways… much of it, I suspected, was built around things like that, though.

With the majority of the Brutes out of the way – and boy what a heap of smelly bodies we'd made in the middle of Main Street! – I felt better about going after those Grunts. They looked significantly less in number now, because I'd gotten a sense of scale with the Brutes coming through. Now, don't take me for a genius – I'm absolutely _horrid_ at estimates. Distance, numbers… sorry. I'd guess at it but I'd almost never be right, or even close. Still, I was now convinced that the word 'billions' nolonger applied.

I took a moment to assess my troops, and dismissed two. One to get looked at, another to pick up our second loss for the day, and drag him back to the base. So I was technically down two, but actually down three. For now. My wounded dude might be back, soon. Marines are like that. Slap a bandaid on it, doc, and be hasty! I've got aliens to kill.

Even if the bandaided place is a missing limb.

I was just about to lead the way after those escaping Grunts when an icon I didn't recognize flashed in my HUD, stopping me.

"Ma'am?" A Marine asked, noting the suddenness of my stop.

"Uh…" was all I had to offer. The icon did not look like a _good_ sign… but what on earth was it, really? I couldn't even tell what the icon really _was_. Most of them are little shapes that represent longer sentences, but this one was blinking like a fiend and I couldn't tell what in hell it even looked like. It was bright, and blood-red, and frantic. That's all I know.

After it had been on for a couple of heartbeats – the mission clock in my HUD ticked off the last of the previous minute and began to count up the next one – I heard my comn click on. First I heard a ragged sounding breath. Then I heard Flint's voice.

"Get to the sloop, right now."

"What? What happened?" I asked, alarmed and unsure what to do with myself all at once. I looked around at the men for a moment, confused, before remembering which way was which and taking off running back the way I'd come from, heading for the _Whispers_. "I'm on my way…"

Flint didn't answer… but the longer he left the comn online, the more I became convinced that it wasn't _him_ in trouble. He sounded a little like he was under a load, but he was breathing deep and even, and he wasn't doing it through his teeth. No pain, no internal agitation. Was he carrying somebody?

Was he carrying the little mini-Spartan guy?

I am possibly not the fastest girl in the UNSC, and perhaps there's a Spartan II out there who was faster on her… or his… feet than me. But I've proven to myself once already that I am faster, at least, than Flint. Maybe it's because I'm a girl, and my power is in my legs. Maybe it's because I've got legs up to my neck. Maybe it's because I'm lighter on my feet and have a lighter body frame than he does. I don't know, but I do know I'm faster than him when we both flat-dead run for it.

I didn't get lost, remarkably enough, and I sailed cleanly from one side to the other of that first crater we'd crossed. I hit the entrance to the maintenance tunnel leading to the first cut roadbed (that really ought to have been a telling of things to come, considering the monstrous stone hills and bluffs this city was built on top of) and flew out across that, too. I think I left a footprint in the center stripe, because I felt something cave just a little under that heel right there.

I got out of the buildings and into the trees and then across the grassy area to the sloop to find it already open, the ramp's foot sitting on the ground. I put on the brakes when I hit the bottom step, using the last of my momentum to fly up the first six steps. I wrapped both hands around the outer hull at the top, though, hauling myself to a dead stop as I lurched through the hatch to the interior of the sloop.

"Flint?" I called, wondering what the emergency was.

"Medical." I heard, over the comn.

"What's going on?" I asked, shouldering down the corridor in that direction. I had a feeling… most women are good at 'feelings' like that… so I started stripping my armor off. I just knew I'd need to be out of it by the time I made Medical.

Sure enough, I got through the door into the miniature medical bay, and the _instant_ I saw what Flint had dragged in, I knew I'd been right.

He raised his steel gray eyes at me and said, simply, "Prep for surgery."

.

ANUNA-01

We had walked around for several hours, but there was no entrance that we could discern there. Going off through the trees to the west, Rano had found another site some half-klick in that direction, so I set off to follow his trail. Doing so I realized how obvious he had been… and I knew just by knowing who he was that this trail was an affront to the fact that he had made it.

The soil, the forest… it was all just _that_ untouched. Igan moved in from wherever he'd wandered off to, also, and I could hear the other two teams dropped off on this mission beginning to decide to meet up with us. They too had found what we had; damaged forestry, and a few scattered elements suggesting structures had been erected, fallen, and been grown over. One had even gone so far as to report that they had found a surface layer of metal much like I had.

The whole thing was worrisome, and we had all admitted as much to one another. Of aggressors, we had all seen nothing. No one had seen any wild life, either… nothing larger than a slow-flying moth-thing spotted nearly twenty klicks from my current position. I had not even seen myopic redbugs in the moss!

A stranger forest there never was… how did the plants get pollinated, given that the wind was cut off by the forest being so dense, so tall, and there were no bugs to flit from blossom to blossom? Such an ecosystem cannot persist for long, one would imagine. I certainly found it odd… and I am no botanist.

Even as warriors, we learn about chemistry, biology, and quite a bit of that biology is entomology. Bugs, as it were, get into sleeping sacks, down into loose armor, into eyes on hot, muggy battlefields, and there is a species on _every_ world that has a fascination with flying up the nasal passageways when one least expects invasion. So with bugs I am familiar. And while I had no problem with being left alone by them… not seeing them anywhere was unsettling.

It was like approaching a San Shyuum and not seeing any sign of a hovering throne. Seeing the honorless maniacs floating above me had always been annoying yes, but… the lack just felt _wrong_. Yes, I would kill them… but I would prefer if I did not feel alarmed first by the sudden, drastic change in their presentation. It would stay my blade, for fear of what it meant. For fear that it meant something particularly bad. In much the same way I had never, ever seen a Prophet, even a minor one, without his hovering throne, I had also never, ever seen a world without bugs on it.

Not once.

The lack of larger life I could handle. Larger life knew when to get out. Reptiles, amphibians, mammals… all have that kind of brain power. But bugs? Not hardly… a bug will stay right where it wants to, even if the location is under heavy plasma barrage at the time. Likely, said bug won't even bother to _try_ to run. It will just stay hung under its leaf or what all else bugs will perch upon, and sit and watch as the fire rains down.

Reaching Rano's position, I arrived to find Igan already there, and coming out of the forest on the far end of the much, much larger clearing was the first of the other two teams. I had considered coming in looking confused and hoping for an enlightening report, but Rano and Igan both already looked confused, and so too did the newly arriving secondary team.

Scratch that.

Clearing my expression, I stepped up to Igan and Rano, and breathed out. "I am learning nothing." I admitted.

"Nor am I." Rano piped in, sounding disgruntled. "There are no doors, no entryways, no sign of technology of any kind here."

"Other than in passing." Igan supplied, gesturing at a faceted, moss-draped shape off to the side. "One would suppose there once was cutting technology here at some point, but it is not here any longer."

"Random emplacements of shaped stones do not make planets and their suns shift through the fabric of reality." I grumbled, looking past Igan as the other three got close enough to hear us talking. Back at the same point they had appeared through the trees, I saw the third team appear, and begin to approach.

"Perhaps it is not a technological marvel at all." Igan offered. "Perhaps it is merely a natural anomaly in the vacuum of space up in orbit?"

"We scanned for anomalies." Rano reminded him. "Point of origin for all of it was here, on _this_ world."

"But there is _nothing_ here." Igan argued. "At least, nothing in this infernal _forest_."

"Infernal." I sighed. "Half-cooked, for certain."

The new arrivals all harrumphed in agreement with my last statement. I turned and shifted past Igan, mainly to do a little meaningless wandering, and paused when I saw what looked like a small, loose stone. I kicked it, for little more reason than to watch it bounce and roll away. It tumbled oddly, for a round stone, and when it knocked against the foot of a freestanding pillar that was only waist-height, I heard something under my hooves shift.

I twisted at the waist, to look back at my fellow warriors. "Did anyone else feel that?"

I got a line of blank looks.

"That shifting…" I tried to explain, but then it _really_ happened, and we all did an involuntary jig right where we stood. At the far end of the clearing, a tree crunched at the base, and wood screamed in agony as it tore apart and the monolith came toppling down.

"Away!" One of my fellow teamleaders cried, sending us all charging headlong in the opposite direction. We did not get far… barely had we made that edge of the clearing than trapdoors slid out in the ground, ditching moss and dirt onto the tops of a dozen little floating machines that wore them like green hats. I had seen Forerunner Sentinels before.

Three booms hovering around a central eye. These were not Sentinels… and their design did not look like Forerunner technology, either. Forerunner is easy to discern from say, Human, or old order Covenant. Or even our own, or that of the new order Covenant.

This was none of the above. It was _different_. There were two booms on the bottom, but when they flexed, they unfolded, transforming into arms. There was a bowl-shaped cap over the top where they wore their moss hats, but when they began to move in other directions than up, the moss hats slipped free readily and revealed them in entirety.

There was no obvious eye. Not even one that doubled as a laser-head. Rather, an iris of shiny golden metal would slip open over the end of each arm, and a lance of heat would shoot from it, and then the iris would slip closed again. If the machines fired by blind sensory equipment, I was unsure.

But the very first shot had punched a fist-sized hole through the commanding team-lead's head, and dropped him like a rock. The rest of us opened fire, but while we brought down three, more than could be counted had come out. Our quick dispersal into the trees saved us at first, but soon enough I could hear the shooting of old Covenant weaponry thin out, and the sound of collapsing body-sized forms happening more and more.

Behind my charging steps, I could still hear Igan and Rano, but which was which I could not spare the time to tell. "Where are the Phantoms?" The near one asked, breathlessly.

By the sound of his voice, I knew that he was Rano. "Just run, brothers! Perhaps we can outdistance them!" I advised. Even if we just got them strung out far enough to keep from being overwhelmed, that would do, too. We had weapons… but we did not have armor sufficient to protect us enough to take a stand-up war with them. Case in point, my fellow team-lead whose shield _and_ helmet had been destroyed in the exact same instantaneous shot.

"Faster!" I heard Igan cry. "There are many of them following us! They are gaining!"

Barely a heartbeat later, "_Igan!_" from Rano.

I twisted around as I heard his plasma rifles firing, and the crackling destruction of a pair of the assaulting drones. Falling farther and farther behind us, I could see Igan's collapsed form, and I knew he was dead. Adding my own fire to the fray, I realized that I had not been misinterpreting my situation when counter-fire lanced the brush around us both. Those beams really _were_ quiet as death. No sizzling crackle like the laser beams from Forerunner Sentinels.

About when Rano jumped clear of a shot meant to end him and had to scramble back to his feet, I heard a maintenance-begging whine. I dove after Rano, desperate to get him back on his hooves and in motion. If any of the others remained at all, I would be surprised. There were _eleven_ of the blasted machines after just us two!

Right as my hand closed around Rano's arm, the machine over us burst open spectacularly to what looked like Human rifle fire. Twisting around to see where it had come from, my momentary joy dissolved into utter despair. It was another machine… a bigger, jets-mounted machine, almost big enough across to hold me up should I stand upon its armor plated back. The bigger, chunkier machine took a while to kill all eleven of our heat-beam shooting antagonists, but I noticed a detail before I'd gotten Rano up and us both running away again.

The bigger machine was disk-shaped, with a fat center and sharp edges. There were glorified rotary cannons on the right and left, but while one of them spun angrily, spilling white-hot rounds at the enemy, the other was twisted to a strange angle and would twitch back and forth in its wheel while buzzing impotently.

This was not a new war.

I was behind Rano, now, both of us pelting along as fast as our legs would possibly carry us, when a new clearing opened up suddenly around us from through a tall, bushy fern. At first I stumbled for the suddenness of our lack of cover – those trees were all that the heat beams didn't just go all the way through, I'd seen – but all the stumble did was spare me Rano's grisly fate.

He got ten meters out ahead of me for my stumbling, and for it, when a third kind of hovering mechanized drone rose up out of the stonework ahead of us, their six-point attack blew him and only him into shredded mulch. He did not scream, but I did hear him inhale before he blew apart, so I knew he saw it coming. More honorable, I suppose, than being ambushed, and requiring one's ancestors to inform one's disembodied spirit that yes, you really are dead now.

I backpedaled back into the trees.

By darting between as many of them as I could, I managed to stay just a step ahead of the pursuing drones, but each time I led one kind into a crowd of another, I would be ignored for long enough for one side or the other to obliterate all of the offending models.

No two models looked alike, although all had a set of similar features. All floated or flew, somehow. All had guns. All were aggressive, and all wanted me dead. They were apparently in contest over which of them got to kill me, however, and I was able to use that to my advantage many times over. Ducking through the forest like a lost prey animal, even going so far as to drop and roll beneath a fallen trunk to keep going, was not sufficient to keep the machines far enough behind me.

It did not take a genius to figure out where the machines were coming from, though. It was the clearings… the stonework, somehow. I had set off some kind of perimeter guard alarm, and brought out the killing machines, and their activation had likely set off more alarms from other clearings, and then everyone was soon out to play.

I ducked through another fern, and as soon as it was behind me, it erupted into shreds. The detonation picked me up and threw me, flipping me end for end once before dropping me onto my knees out ahead. My shields were gone, but they would recover and I was unhurt, if savagely out of breath. Desperate, I lurched back to my hooves and pelted on, aware that the more of these robots I got active, the less likely I would be a primary target, and the more likely I would be able to get back to the Phantom with enough time to make it aboard and then away.

So when I spied another clear area out to the side of where I was running, I turned and made for it for all I was worth.

That one must have been a special form of bad, because the machines following me all put on their best efforts to herd me away, to make me go some other direction, and to stop me outright before reaching it. I looped around five times just to defy them, and then I got my wish.

My hooves touched hot moss, throwing it up behind me and baring sharply gleaming metal and glass and what looked like crystalline substance as a loud _whang _followed each step I took.

The machines drew up shy of going out over the surface, but they continued to position and fire, making my running flight a dancing, jagged one. Finally reaching the first of many dozens of rock ruins, I dove behind one and curled up, gasping hard. I was let to stay there for several seconds, until I was ready to believe I had finally found a safe haven and could call for pickup, when I felt the ground there stir, too.

"Oh, Forerunners spare my soul…" I begged, breathless, as the surface I was on actually _moved_. My fingers clutched at the shape I was hiding behind, but it was polished slick under the mossy growth, and I could find no hold. I had no defense when the metal and glass pulled back and the crystal suddenly _vanished_… maybe it wasn't a crystalline substance at all, but was rather an energy field of some kind.

I screamed more out of principle than fright on my way down, but while much of the noise was wrought of frustration at being hunted from all angles, I will freely admit that there was some fear included in my cry… after all, who likes to fall, especially any great distance, when what one felt before the plummet was a suggestion of _hot_ from _below_?

Would that not suggest I was going to plummet into a molten substance, metal or rock perhaps? Was that not worth a terrified scream? I made a tremendous splash when I struck, yes. But the liquid was warm, merely, and did not seem to be of any particularly harming quality.

Getting my head above it, I clawed the somewhat slimy stuff from my face and gasped for air. I looked up then, and alarm re-wrote into my manner as the doors over my head began to slide together again. There were five of them, independent of one another, and the energy field besides. I had not really the strength to swim, though, besides that I am not built for the exercise. Feeling the very odd sensation of a soft fabric slipping sideways over my arms, I paused in my kicking to raise them out of the liquid, and look at them.

What I saw scared me even more. My armor was melting right off my arms, the metal, the ceramic, the ablative coating, even the coloring and the skinsuit beneath it, all drooled off like waxy soup until I had been literally rinsed clean.

I would have paddled for shore as fast as I could have, had there been a shore to paddle _to. _There was none. But a curious thing indeed became known as the last of my armor… heh, the entire outfit… came free of me and finished dissolving at the bottom of the pool I was in.

I felt no burn, no pain, no itching, consuming ache as an acid or caustic material might cause me. No… I felt merely wet, like I had dropped into water. I was quite nude, however, and certainly weaponless. I found it very, very odd, so much so that I forgot for a moment how much my body hurt from the overexertion of a moment ago.

I was reminded, though, soon enough, as nothing else new happened immediately to distract me. I tried to give my paddling some direction, tried to find some kind of edge, wall, shore, something, to go to and get out of the liquid. I did not even quite so much mind now that I was nolonger being shot at that I was naked. I just could not swim anymore, and I needed to be on solid ground to keep from drowning in my exhaustion.

The liquid had no currents tugging at it, and all the waves and ripples were made exclusively by myself. But I still found no edge of the pool I was in to cling to, nothing at all to suggest I was going to enjoy very much at all of a lucky streak… in as much of a bizarre lucky streak as it was.

Rano, Rano, Rano… he had saved me, whether he knew it or not. If he had not died when he had, then it would have been me, and his demise allowed me to know that our direction needed to change. That, in turn, had led me to here… and I remained alive, and at last away from those machines that had come out and murdered my brothers. I pined for company of some kind for a moment, wishing I was not all that had lived. Finally, my strength gave out, and I could not fight anymore. My body sank, cutting off access to air as I went down. At first I held it, just for a chance to relax and rest, but then I could not hold my breath for as long as some others, and I soon needed to fight again, lest I drown and die despite being saved from the machines.

I got so close, I felt my fingers stroke open air through the surface, but I just did not have enough strength to get all the way up, and the pain dragged my kicking to a still. Sorrow filled my mind as the terror of reaching for death with a clear and open path to survival right in front of me took hold. It was not an honorable end, drowning… but I just could not kick, could not flail, could not catch enough surface area to push myself far enough up, to get another breath.

My held air came out in a choke, and I almost breathed in some of the liquid, but I again held it for a moment more. I shook my head, as if that would have really helped, but I was still going down… down… down some more.

I let my arms trail over my head, awareness fading even as I tried anew to fight one final time for a breath, just a single breath, of that precious air. Spots swam in my eyes, thought blanked out repeatedly, and all I cared about was one more breath… My throat opened, and I inhaled a lungful of the liquid.

Internally, the reaction to the flooding was to gag, choke, and heave all at once. My entire chest constricted as my stomach muscles cinched tight to repel the invasion of unacceptable substance into my lungs. I was vaguely aware that I was falling faster, but as I choked the breath of liquid back out again, I knew I was fading out, and soon I would die. The burning, choking agony ripping my chest to shreds from the inside was not due to the chemical nature of what I had inhaled. It was the oxygen starvation eating at my cellular structure, the cells starving and dying inside me.

I was starving and dying, too.

My hooves struck something hard, and my legs buckled beneath me, until I had piled in the bottom of a narrow tube. In a terrible rush, all the liquid was sucked out through holes beneath me, until I was slick and soaking but otherwise out in clear air again. I gurgled for a second, before my throat opened, and I got a tiny gasp in.

I was effectively blind by that point, but the tiny gasp was enough to resuscitate me… and I suddenly heaved all over again, the vomit and exhalation of liquid from my lungs happening simultaneously. I had not been, prior to that, aware that both "throat-holes" could be open at the _same time_. Learn something new every day, the Humans say.

Guess they are right about that part.

My next breath was a little deeper, several gagging gasps, and then I coughed hard and began to choke up all the little moist swatches I had left behind in my initial up-heave. The air was sharp, tangy, and frigidly dry. It hurt… but then, the rest of me did, too. Finally, the liquid was out, and the coughing was reduced to dry chokes, and I could readily breathe again. I let myself sag against the scooped interior of the tube I was in and just inhale loudly, content to be alive and not much more than just.

I guess I ought to have guessed that I was not out of the… water… as the saying goes… yet. Rather, while all sign of the liquid was more or less gone now, I was very suddenly nolonger alone in my little prison. It was roughly twice as big around as I was, giving me plenty of space to be piled in a heap in the bottom of it, but while it was twice again as tall as I, it was still quite a small prison indeed.

Snakes coiled over my legs, reached across my belly, slithered over my arms. None seemed to try to catch me, restrict me, or bite at me, so I just lifted them off and threw them aside as they got to places I disapproved of. That qualifying area was pretty much the majority of me, to be honest.

Touch more than my face or my hands, and I will take exception… I am particular that way.

Finally, the snakes got themselves sorted, each one seeming to adhere to a point of origin at the base of the tube. Several of them got behind me and pushed, causing me to lurch forward, but there was another one back there that I did not know about until it bit me.

Right at the base of my skull.

The command fired in my brain to make my arms rise and reach for the offending thing, as nervous reaction made my back arch. That command got as far as raise the arms, then it cut off and my body felt suddenly spongy as I flailed weakly for a few seconds. More and more of the snakes began to bite into my flesh, many of them striking nervous points, quite a few of those happening along the length of my spine.

I felt my brain go cold, as the nerves in the skin and muscle just under said bit of skin told me just how many needles were going up through my skull from that first snake. Pain lanced up from every nerve ending I owned as they went through the bone and up where they had no business being, but I could not fight… my body was not responding to my own command anymore.

They say there are no nerves in the brain.

They are wrong.

My just-barely recovered vision faded out again, and I fell into the long dark once more.

.

FLINT-093

Surgery took her all of an hour. Poor kid had torn quite a bit of himself up playing patty-cake with that Brute, but he was tough as nails and pulled through anyway. There was a reason I'd called Tori in for this, though… on the one hand, I have fat fingers. On the other… I've never really done restorative surgery, and while I can probably do it on principle, I've never actually done it in _practice_ and I was _not_ going to risk Andy's life on principle.

Tori has these narrow little pencil-thin things she uses as fingers, very fine-boned, and she's good with them. Can manipulate tiny things easily. I fumble tiny things. Anything smaller than a .223 round and I'm probably just going to push it around on the surface it's on unless I can get some needle-nosed pliers or something.

Being a scientist, one cannot be squeamish. There simply is no real allowance for it. But I wasn't the kind to much appreciate eviscerating someone if the idea was to _put them back together_. I have no real problem blasting people to shreds… been doing it long enough. But carving into someone that I _know_ is still alive, and toodling around inside their innards… and then stitching them up again? Especially when I know _who_ it is I'm doing that to?

Sorry… squeamish.

Funny how that kind of distinction will make all the difference in the world. Failing utterly to look at his face while I helped out helped me some. But not all the way. My insides had twisted into a merry little knot by the time we were done, and I was infinitely glad Tori had done all the real intensive bits of the work. I don't think I really could have, to be perfectly honest.

She got it done, made it clean, and stitched it all back closed again, and when she was done I was relieved. Whew… glad that's overwith. I was sick and nauseated and weak in the middle all at once. I needed to get out of Medical before I did something biological about my condition, too… Tori might misinterpret it somehow.

Through an act of God, I managed to make it through cleanup and then get out of the room and up the hall before I just couldn't take it anymore. I paused where I was and leaned heavily on the wall, feeling shaky. Tori would be a moment more in coming out of Medical, blessedly, so I had a moment to shake myself down and get over it without her there to watch.

I didn't dare close my eyes, afraid I'd just see that horrible image of Andy's innards again, stenciled in on the undersides of my eyelids. It took me all of two minutes to find my feet again, though, so I walked on down to my quarters.

Okay, correction. Yes, there _are_ two of them. But, for reasons only she would understand, _most_ nights only one of them gets used. This doesn't mean much other than I get _two_ girls laying on me at night, except under fairly rare conditions when the cat has to be somewhere else for a spell. That particular instance has not occurred in a while, though.

Speaking of the cat… she was there when I walked in. I needed the kind of comfort that cat provides, so I scooped her up and sat down in the warm spot she'd made on the bed, settling her drowsy self in my lap. First she sank her claws into my thigh and stretched, and when I plucked her paws off my leg, she yawned at me. Flashing tiny little fangs, she then perked her ears up and looked up at me.

Meow?

I ran one hand down her back, using the other to rub the prickles out of my skin. "Yeah, I'm back." I told her, half-grinning at her antics. Funny how being slugged by a Brute only puts me down for a moment, but getting tiny cat's claws sunk into my leg will get a pained grimace every time. Perspective, I suppose… or maybe it's the nerves involved? Brutes don't often aim for my legs.

The cat always does.

Unless she's after my ears. I sat there running my fingers through the cat's fur – she's a tiny little thing even for a normal house cat, so there's not a whole lot of her to pet on – for a while, until I felt reasonably assured that I'd seen the last of the gore for the day. Seeing enemy explode is one thing. Even Innies. But watching your allies come apart is a whole other boat, and there are mental processes attached to that that don't come with watching enemies die.

I'm pretty sure there's a medical name for that perception in the psychological world, but I don't know what it is. Finally, the cat a boneless pool of purring fuzz in my lap, I felt reasonably mentally stabilized enough to go back into Medical and get my armor. It needed cleaning, after the stabbing spree I'd handed that last Brute, and there was probably a lot of other junk stuck into it, too. Lifting the cat up off my legs, I set her aside, but I hadn't even gotten _to_ the door before she'd zipped past me and was out and down the corridor.

She's fast as a speeding bullet, some days, and others she just _doesn't_ _move_. And on some surfaces, her paws don't find proper purchase and she'll _slide_… and when that happens it's usually pretty hilarious watching her go. I have no honest idea where she goes at those speeds, or why she even bothers to go at all, but go she does and quickly. Perhaps she just enjoys the exercise.

Or there might be a sound or two the sloop makes that is beyond human hearing ranges that really get to her after a while. There were no maintenance warning lights on the control board at the bridge, and I couldn't hear anything questionable from anywhere aboard, so if that was the case, then she'd eventually have to get used to it. I was not going to take the ship apart just to look for a reason to justify Tori's cat being a crazy little kook.

Finding some way to get some decent sleep in some other position than face-down, however… I'd likely have to shoot the runt. If I let her in the room, she'd harass the daylights out of me until I rolled over, and if I didn't let her in, she'd claw at the door to the room _all night long,_ yowling at the top of her tiny little lungs.

Needless to say… there was no rest for _anyone_ when I shut her out. Tori thinks it's cute. Tori usually thinks the cat's antics are cute, though, and there were some of them I actually disapproved of.

Still, she had her uses, and being a distraction from staring at Andy's insides for an hour was a good example of one of them. Her purring also had that special vibratory tone that, if I threw her over my left shoulder and carried her around like that for a while, would help loosen up the soreness in the scar tissues. If she hadn't been one of those purr-on-demand cats, though, that wouldn't have really worked.

I tried not to look in Andy's direction as I entered Medical, going instead over to the table where I'd stacked my Mjolnir prior to the surgery and gathered it up in my arms. Somehow I managed to make all of it bundle in such a way as to not need to make two trips to get all of it, and I carried it up to the quarters again without incident. The original armor lockers _had_ been in a separate room, but the quarter was empty and huge, and after our first mission together on the sloop, both Tori and I had decided that it was a terrible inconvenience to have to go into three different rooms just to get fully outfitted.

So we'd redone up a weapons' locker, consolidating everything but the armor in there, and the armor lockers got moved up into the quarter we used.

I can honestly say I've never been inside the other one… I have considered it, though. Just because I never go in there, Tori isn't likely to look for me there, and it would make a dandy place to hide from her one of these days.

Because honestly… it's hide from her or kill her. And I have a distinct feeling that killing her really won't be as much of a solution as I think it is. I've spent whole nights slumped in the pilot's chair on the bridge with the door sealed just to get some peace and quiet, but as much as I hate hearing her bitch at me, I've begun to think I can handle the agonizing sensory clarity less.

Tori is a little like the cat, in that sense. She's a point of focus, something that grounds me where reality ought to stay. All the training, all the combat experience had gotten drilled into me so deeply, that I simply cannot ignore a presence in my vicinity. And I'd discovered that if my security isn't absolute, and I have something I can focus on, then I can usually fight off the clarity and win. I won't call Tori a _threat_, so much, but she sure likes to pick fights. The aggression is annoying, but it's better than the alternative…

It's when I'm by myself, nothing to do… and it's haunting as hell. There are things in that void that I hope I never see manifested.

Back in the quarter, I got sat down again, and this time without the cat, I began to work over my armor. As I finished with each piece – and well knowing I might just wind up putting it back on and going back out again – I put it into the case inside my locker. So long as Tori didn't get after me again, I could get it out and on me again quickly enough.

My Mjolnir was a second skin to me, after all… and I am _still_ not over that addiction.

When all that remained was the helmet, I put everything else away and just sat there holding it, staring at myself in the visor and pondering the colors reflected on it. My skin looked very metallic and golden, and my eyes looked damn near black. But the black t-shirt I had on looked a funny color of puke brown.

Ugh! I did _not_ need that kind of reminder right now…

I looked up when I heard the door auto-open, some four or so hours after having first left Medical. The cat could make it open, and I actually expected it to be her… but instead of the cat's whiskered face, I saw Tori's boots walk in.

"Hey." She greeted, making the distance and turning to sit down next to me. I half wondered what she was up to now… one thing a scientist almost never said, it was 'hey'. And even if there were exceptions to that rule, _Tori_ did not say 'hey'.

That was my word. I didn't look up at her, still holding the helmet of my Mjolnir in my hands. I returned my gaze to it instead, staring at the convex reflection of my face in the visor again.

"I looked up your file." She finally admitted, beginning to get to the point.

"Uh huh." I mumbled.

"Again." She admitted, confessing to what I'd already guessed – if there had been anybody on that asteroid where I'd found her who _hadn't_ looked up my file, I would have been surprised. "I know why I didn't remember you, now."

That raised my head, and my eyebrows, too. I looked at her.

"You're not really zero-nine-three." She told me, matter-of-factly.

I shook my head in agreement; "No."

"You were zero five seven." Tori went on. "Your file is a nightmarish mess, really… but after looking up all the odds and ends it started to make some sense." I went back to looking at the visor.

"Intel on the mission against the _Unyielding Hierophant_ leaked. ONI knew I was still dark, so they rewrote my files to cover for the fact that lives were lost." I explained, almost absently. "They effectively erased Grace from existence… but Spartans never die. They wanted someone to show the public, to prove that we were all still alive."

Tori hmmed. "Is nothing about you solid, though?" She ventured, suggesting there was more to this than my seemingly odd Spartan numeral. I let the helmet roll in my grasp, until it was topside-down and I was looking down into the interior where my head went.

"Anything in particular you wanted to address?" I asked, figuring if she wasn't going to get to the point, then I'd have to make her.

"Like how your number isn't zero-nine-three, like how your name isn't Flint…."

My head jerked up, and I shot her a confused look. "What? Yes, it is." I protested. Where had that come from?

Tori shook her head, sure of herself. "No, it isn't. Medical records on induction date to the ORION Project have you down as something else." And then she made a pointed elaboration; "Your real name is Frank."

My eyebrows met. "No, Tori… my name is Flint. I've always been Flint."

"That's not what your records show," she countered.

"There's a reason for that." I answered.

She cocked a brow.

"Frank is my brother's name."

She raised both; "Your _brother_? You told them your name was your brother's name? Why?"

"I didn't tell them, I merely allowed them to believe that." I explained, still feeling a little defensive. Friends, family… parents especially… it was all a gray blur in the backmost, darkest corner of my living memory. But Frank… Frank I'd never forget. "They were strange people who looked like government officials. They came to our school, and asked for my brother. They asked _me_ if I was Frank. I didn't trust them. I _knew_ he hadn't done anything wrong, and I didn't want him to get into trouble for nothing. So I told them yes."

Tori shook her head, confused. "Why on Earth would you do that? Why protect him?"

"He was my brother, Tori." I told her. "As an orphaned only child, I wouldn't expect you to understand. But people do that sort of thing. My brother, I trusted. The people ONI sent to get him, I did not."

"You realize ONI chose us for good reason… you could have gotten yourself killed by not being the one they really wanted." Tori argued.

"I didn't know that at the time." I told her. "And now that I do… I still don't regret my answer. It's best they didn't put him through this."

She gave me a strange look, still puzzling me over. "How did they get you mixed up? I'm sure that ONI was pretty thorough about that sort of thing…"

I looked back down at the helmet in my hands, starting to recall the day… it was some month and a half before my seventh birthday. "Because we are identical twins, Tori."

.

TORI-138

I'd left Medical and gone up to the bridge, mostly to secure a patch-link to Command for some data. I didn't want to mess up and be administering something to the mini-Spartan that he might be allergic to.

There are not _two_ Flints in medical history, after all…

That was where I found out he was Andrew-249, an S-III, and he really wasn't wearing Mjolnir at all. It's SPI armor, or Semi-Powered Infiltration armor. And it's dandy as hell for stealth and recon but a bit of tissue in a stand-up fight. I also found records placing him on a special reconnaissance mission linked to a dreadnaught that housed an augment-company called the 51st Aeronautic.

Flint had mentioned that company.

So now I knew why they knew each other, and when it had happened. Right before, it seemed, Flint's big shoulder injury. And the utter destruction of the dreadnaught and subsequent deaths of all of the 51st Aeronautic.

As it turns out, that was not to be the only shocker for the day. For cross-referencing on that juicy tidbit I'd found while perusing Andrew's medical records, I called up Flint's. Immune to this, immune to that, yadda, yadda. But then I was looking a little deeper than I had back at the laboratory, and when I ran across some included data that _contradicted_ the file…

Why would he be put down under 093, and yet, earlier records attached from a couple of early missions call him by 059? Curious, I dug in, my casual desire to know what not to give Andrew now leading me to wonder some serious things about Flint.

Going back to the start of the records in the file, I found something even more odd. That man has more secrets than ONI, I suppose, and the tight-lipped manner I'd discovered about him was not particularly uncharacteristic.

I closed the files, having gotten what I really needed already, and decided to go and talk to… I don't even know what to call him anymore. I guess Chief is all that remained solid in that mess of a file he's got. So I was going to go and talk to _Chief_.

And when I found him, he was sitting on the bunk in the bedroom, helmet in his hands, staring at himself in the mirrored visor and looking like he wondered what to do with himself now. I was a little surprised he hadn't just put it all back on, gone back out and done some more hunting, but since he was still there I wasn't going to complain.

When he looked up, he only looked as far up as my boots, but the look on his face bordered on the inquisitively disgusted. Maybe he'd had a thought that reminded him of something nasty right before I'd walked in. But I wasn't going to ask… I had other questions and I thought they were more important.

"Hey." I said. As I sat down next to him, he looked back at the helmet. "I looked up your file." I told him, wondering what was on his mind. He's quiet by nature, but he usually has _something_ to add when prompted.

"Uh huh." Was all I got.

"Again." I corrected myself; yes, I'd seen the thing before, but I'd only given it a cursory inspection then. Now I had some questions that I hadn't realized needed asking back then. "I know why I didn't remember you, now." How could I not? He'd been a confused jumble, and anyone would have been uncertain.

That raised his head finally, and his eyebrows lifted slightly as he looked at me.

"You're not really zero-nine-three." I informed him, bluntly.

He shook his head, in agreement; "No."

"You were zero-five-seven." I wanted to let him know I had at least some of his secrets in hand, and by that tactic I wanted him to tell me what was going on. Why it got like that. "Your file is a nightmarish mess, really… but after looking up all the odds and ends it started to make some sense."

He looked back down at the helmet again. "Intel on the mission against the _Unyielding Hierophant_ leaked. ONI knew I was still dark, so they rewrote my files to cover for the fact that lives were lost." He said. Honestly, he sounded more uninterested in the fact that I'd found out some _very_ interesting tidbits about him. "They effectively erased Grace from existence… but Spartans never die. They wanted someone to show the public, to prove that we were all still alive."

I hmmed. "Is nothing about you solid, though?" If he thought a cursory explanation would placate me, he was wrong. I needed more than that.

I watched as the helmet slid in a roll under his fingers, tipping up so the heavy end – the top – was pointed down and he was looking at the dark, padded inside where his head goes.

"Anything in particular you wanted to address?" He asked.

Yes, point in fact… "Like how your number isn't zero-nine-three, like how your name isn't Flint…." I could have gone on, but I'd lent some minor emphasis on the _your name isn't Flint_ because _that_ part had me rumpled.

His head jerked up, and he gave me a startled, alarmed expression. "What? Yes, it is." That was a protest – like he'd never, ever been confronted about _that_ part before. Ha, got him. I was going to squeeze it out if I had to do it literally.

I was certain, and I shook my head, correcting him. "No, it isn't. Medical records on induction date to the ORION Project have you down as something else." To let him know I was not bluffing, I handed him the evidence; "Your real name is Frank."

He frowned at me… but it was not his usual frown. "No, Tori… my name is Flint. I've always been Flint."

"That's not what your records show," I protested.

The frown changed hue again. "There's a reason for that."

I was, I admit, somewhat surprised that there might be something in that all-inclusive mess that was not, after all, included. Had Flint's secretive nature gone so far as to even keep intel away from ONI, even as a child?

"Frank is my brother's name."

My eyebrows reached for my hairline as surprise knifed me in the guts; "Your _brother_? You told them your name was your brother's name? Why?" He really wasn't faking it – he was bona-fide _nuts_.

"I didn't tell them, I merely allowed them to believe that." He told me, for all the world sounding about as sincere as a body could be. "They were strange people who looked like government officials. They came to our school, and asked for my brother. They asked _me_ if I was Frank. I didn't trust them. I _knew_ he hadn't done anything wrong, and I didn't want him to get into trouble for nothing. So I told them yes."

I could only shake my head, thrown for a brand new loop. Yes… he'd been born this way. "Why on Earth would you do that? Why protect him?"

"He was my brother, Tori." Simple explanation, meant nothing to me. "As an orphaned only child, I wouldn't expect you to understand. But people do that sort of thing. My brother, I trusted. The people ONI sent to get him, I did not."

Ouch. Yes, I'd told him that… the folks got glassed, I got shipped out. Few weeks of picking fights in the orphanage later, ONI shows up and carts me off to go be a Spartan. But I'd never realized that my condition among our number had not been the norm. ONI _advertised_ that I was what they used… and here he had _siblings_… living family. "You realize ONI chose us for good reason… you could have gotten yourself killed by not being the one they really wanted." Maybe there was just something about him… er… Frank… that ONI couldn't bear to pass up?

"I didn't know that at the time." He admitted. "And now that I do… I still don't regret my answer. It's best they didn't put him through this."

I made a quick mental checklist of what 'this' was, in that sentence. Maybe he was right… or maybe he was wrong, and Frank would have borne the terrible brunt a little better than Flint had done? Still, even for brothers, kids just don't get mixed up that easily. The spooks sent to get us had _pictures_, among other information. "How did they get you mixed up? I'm sure that ONI was pretty thorough about that sort of thing…"

Next shocker; "Because we are identical twins, Tori."

My whole brain went epically _BLAW_! What do you _say_ to something like that? My dear sweet had a clone puttering around out there somewhere, wearing his face, probably sounded just like him! And here I'd been ready to believe that there were _not_ two Flints running around in the galaxy…

Turns out I was wrong about that.

"Frank." I muttered, trying to picture Flint standing next to himself and calling himself Frank. He'd always been Flint to me, so it was hard to do. Wait… no, the other guy would be shorter. Little narrower, just a tad. Not as strong, fast, or well-trained. That's if he was military at all, now days. And he wouldn't be able to pass as Flint for long, given that he's not an augment from the ORION Project, and Flint's suit would shred him.

Then the next part hit me. I scrunched my face up, and looked over at Flint again. "Your names both start with an F."

Cat-like smirk.

"I thought that people naming twins like that was just a _rumor_." I protested, feeling hollow. I really didn't know this guy… not at all. Not like I thought. He was his own little enigma, and he had secrets within secrets, and he'd even kept some of them from _ONI_.

For how many years? All of them… more than anyone had ever known. Briefly I wondered if anyone had given the real Frank some hell for being really Frank after ONI tried to recruit him and got Flint, claiming to be Frank, and… gah! I turned my poor head in so many mind-numbing, rapid-spinning directions that I soon couldn't keep them straight anymore.

Flint pretends to be Frank. Later, more likely it's CPO Mendez, asks him what his name is and he admits the truth. File update. Flint is now Flint again. Frank, meanwhile, has been successfully saved from ONI's clawed hands.

What about Frank seemed superior to Flint that ONI chose him, of the pair, and not Flint? I admit, there are a _buttload_ of things about Flint I'd never thought ONI would have wanted to show up in a Spartan. Sarcasm, for one. Pessimism, for another. Was Frank the "good twin", and Flint the "evil twin"? He'd made a pretty good little soldier, I suppose, but if ONI had wanted Frank instead, then the odds of them being happy with second-best were small.

And then I wondered if anyone higher up had noticed when little zero-five-seven suddenly changed identities on them, mid-training. Maybe they thought nothing of it, if in fact anyone noticed at all that Frank was suddenly missing and there was this extraneous kid named Flint thrown in there somehow.

Later in life, they did it to him themselves, changing him from zero-five-seven to zero-nine-three. Identity change seemed the story of his life, really. And the secrets got deeper, and deeper… more profound, more dangerous.

There are a billion things about twins that people will tell you that would be _very bad_ to have one in, one out, of the ORION Project.

Like how they share nerve endings.

Like how they feel each other's emotions.

Like how they _know_ without proof if their counterpart is dead or alive.

I pitied poor Frank. I had, like everyone else in the UNSC, watched Flint die on public broadcast. Frank, meanwhile, had likely _felt_ him die, on public broadcast.

"Flint…"

"Yeah?" If he knew I'd just gone on a mental merry-go-round, he didn't show it.

"What happened to the real Frank?"

I got a shrug.

"How can you not know? If you're twins…"

"In learning how to shut out _me_, Tori… the last time I felt anything from his end was several decades ago. I wouldn't even know if he's still _alive_."

Ouch.

I really, _really_ pitied poor Frank.


	3. Mission Prerogative

**3: Mission Prerogative **

**ANUNA-02**

Command sequences rolled through my forebrains, but most of them made little sense and were gone from memory almost as quickly as they came into it. I could not control my own body, could not command my own motions, could not fight.

I begged for death and heard laughter.

Sight filtered in almost as if I were suddenly a machine, a mockery of flesh and droid, and focus shifted inward, outward, settled somewhere in the middle and hesitated there as the fuzz slowly eased back. Brightness soon replaced the dim lighting seen through mostly-closed eyelids, and for a moment I wondered if I had not been downloaded into a new body.

A new, alien body… but when the nervous system checked in, as it is apt to do in situations of wakening, I felt familiar to myself. Confusion replaced my begging, and I was mentally silent for several heartbeats.

I heard the overlapping pulse of a pair, one primary, one smaller secondary. I was… normal? And yet the nagging ache of overwear on my knees was absent, the permanent headache I had gotten used to was gone, and the searing burn in my ribs from the punishing gauntlet I had raced through was missing, too. What had happened to me?

I tried to raise my right arm, testing, and I saw it come up. The longer I stayed as I now found myself, the less detachment I felt… and I turned the familiar Sangheilian hand around under my gaze to see the knuckles on the back, and the soft rise of the large veins just under the skin there.

Then I felt my mandibles move, as if in protest of being neglected, without permission or command. Focusing for a moment on them, I nipped them against one another, testing… tasting… and while my mouth felt just a little dry, and it tasted a little odd, everything seemed in order. Moving on, I pulled on the appropriate muscles to curl myself forward, and in doing so I let my head hang down to see the rest of me. I was, unsurprisingly, still nude as a newborn.

But my skin… it was… darker. Smoother. It looked fake, almost, it was so very without blemish or mark. The… mother had claimed they were freckles shot at my head that had missed and pimpled over my chest… were gone. The terrible battle-scars were _all_ missing. Even the most important mark I had ever gotten, the jagged line I was most proud to wear.

I remembered his name, now.

That mark had been a gift, the gift of life, of a clash of cultures that had permitted me to see this day. That scar, that _missing_ badge of the unquestionable honor of one 'Zelisee Zero-Nine-Three… that was the holes that had been punched into me that he had deemed non-fatal. And by his insistence, I was denied an honor-killing, and permitted instead to heal as I might, and recover to fight another day.

I felt affronted that it was missing.

But when I tore off the slanted plate I had found myself half-leaned, half-lying on and stomped to my hooves, I opened my mouth wide to discover I could not roar in furious protest.

Instead, now upright, what came out was this; "Yes… this body will do nicely."

It was then I understood that I was not the one in control.

I was merely an observer.

.

**FLINT-093**

I don't know how long it took us. Couple of days or so. Tori's piss-ant mood had only half-lifted, but even she couldn't stay furious _all_ of the time. Her face would start to hurt from being frozen in an angry expression after a while, and then she'd have to justify being in some other mood for a spell.

That was my guess anyway.

Andy seemed to be doing well, but he took the meds like a death sentence and usually looked dead whenever I came through… Tori liked to keep him under, because like me he was infinitely fidgety and couldn't justify holding still for long at all. The one time he'd gotten away from us and tried to get up anyway, he'd only succeeded in making the floor. And I'd been in earshot when he complained about impact.

So I didn't protest Tori keeping him under sedatives whenever we couldn't be there to watch him. I wanted to – on principle. But honestly, it was sedate the kid or strap his ass down, and I did _not_ want to strap him to the gurney. He'd likely just decide we weren't friends anymore and twist the gurney into scrap metal for us. Waking up the first time, he'd been groggy, confused, and wanted to know where in hell he was.

The inside of my sloop was nothing like the inside of a standard UNSC spacecraft, after all, and we refer to Medical as a "mini-medbay" for a reason. It's very small, compared to a medbay designed to service the crew of a cruiser or bigger.

But he was doing pretty well by the time Command radioed in and told us we were needed somewhere else. Mission priority was urgent, but then they all were, or I'd never get handed the task. Mission classification was different, though – someone had shot down an Elite cruiser, and there was nothing in the area to check out what it had been. Ugh, recon. It's never _just_ recon. So since the closest allied craft was us… that meant we'd fly in first and blow the horn if we found something other than a lucky comet.

My guts told me it was not a comet.

I hated to ditch Andy and run, but I couldn't take the kid with me. S-III or not, Command would see him as 'baggage' that I did not need, and so I had to find somewhere else to put him up until he could get back on his feet. Explaining that to Andy took a few tries… something nearly all Spartans share is the magnetic attraction to combat… and this mission absolutely screamed combat.

We go, they say, to suicide missions like moths to flame. And we'd popped in the fire at about the same going rate, too. I admit I jump for combat ops too, but not so much for suicide missions. Maybe I'm different. I don't mind. I usually go wherever I'm sent, but I have never volunteered for anything in particular.

I heard a goodly number of the guys who went down on Reach had _begged_ for mission clearance. Andy was no real exception, even pounded to pudding and only half-alive. He still wanted to get up, get a gun and get after it. Still wanted to fight. Felt like a limpet lying there waiting for something to happen.

He's a good kid.

I left him (and yes, his armor, too. I'm not _that_ demented) in the care of the rear Marine base, and left them strict instruction not to let him wander until he was healed enough to walk without wobbling. Don't get me wrong, Andy takes orders. But he _hates_ getting commanded to 'do nothing'. Which was more or less what I told him to do.

Hey, _I_ had spent some eight months in rehab once… he'd live.

Hmm… that was my being shot to shit from behind by a SPNKr rocket fired by a Flood form on Delta Halo. Ah, memories. I hadn't seen the Elites in a while, so I suppose it was high time I went back their direction.

Maybe I'd see someone I knew, and we'd talk. On that topic, and yes it's related, I noticed Tori was up to some questionable activity before we got packed in and left the ground. I have no idea what it was she brought aboard, but I'm content to let it rest in that I'm more or less convinced that whatever it was, it's not alive, and it's also not heavy. The _Whispers_ always lets me know whenever I pull out from a resource cache.

Fuel was more or less optimal… and okay, I felt bad about abandoning the Marines here, but we'd broken the line for them and according to the intel I got out of Tori (eked out around two more arguments) their morale was pretty good. They could handle it, I suppose, even if we had to leave prematurely.

The cat joined me on the bridge for takeoff, but like most creatures with eyes she does like to look out the windows from time to time, and takeoff from a planet heading into space is never a dull picture. It's just repetitive as hell and eventually you stop caring. When we broke atmosphere and all there was to see was a velvet black with white salt spilled over it, she turned and jumped down out of the copilot's chair, to dash headlong for the door.

Still do not know why she randomly goes fast like that.

I punched in the coordinates and got us into slipspace, and since we would spend a couple of days just cruising through slipspace, I got up and left with the controls on autopilot. Now, this does not mean I had Thor plugged in. While I still had the AI, I hadn't poked his chip into a jack port since taking him out of the helmet I'd handed over after getting my new one. He was old, too old, and likely rampant as hell. That I had failed utterly to turn him over (despite the fact of him being in my possession at all was the fault of a mission to retrieve him for Command) was more or less moot at this point.

Thor had been a prickly bastard back _then_… he was not likely to be any healthier now, even restricted to dormancy in the bottom of my sock drawer.

The only thing keeping me from tossing him into the recycler unit was the fact that even rampant AI's have their uses… and while at the moment I couldn't think of a good example, I knew that eventually I'd need him for something. Plug him into a gun and run like all hell while he harasses the enemy? I don't know.

I'd find out when I got to that point. In the meantime, he was gonna stay in that sock drawer.

I'd reached the juncture in the corridor outside the bridge that led to the opposite ends of the sloop before I saw Tori coming up after me, and for a moment I watched her come, contemplating what my reaction was going to be. At first, she didn't look all that peeved. Okay, so I could probably go do something useful with myself and not be in too much trouble.

But when I turned the other way and started to walk in that direction, I heard her make one of those under-the-breath _grrr_ noises, and I knew before I'd taken the second step that I'd messed up somehow.

I walked a little faster.

.

**TORI-138**

Well damn him if he was going to be like that, anyway! I stopped bothering to approach when he turned away, and crossed my arms as I watched him go on down the corridor and around the second bend. Here I had been all prepared to go have a nice little chat with the guy – okay, so our track record for converse was not that appealing – and he goes and does that!

He saw me coming. I _know_ he saw me coming. And then he turned his back and just went the other direction, as if I hadn't ever been there. So I let him go, figuring he was probably having an attitude problem about now anyway if he was behaving like that and it was subsequently for the best that I let him have the time to chill out before going after him again.

I must confess, he's stranger and stranger to me every passing day. There are times when he is so very charming, and then there are times when he's so callous I want to bust a cap in his head and call it a day.

Okay, so the charming parts had gotten past my defenses… I hadn't known I was supposed to be cold when he was warm, since he tended to be cold when it was me being warm. Can I be blamed for being naïve? He was a completely different creature than I. Been shooting aliens since he was a kid, and meanwhile I'd been slowly growing a fondness for agoraphobia. That mess still got to me some times, but it was not as bad if I was dirtside.

Trying to follow him out onto the hull was _nightmarish_. Invariably I'd panic and do something completely idiotic and then he'd have to go back inside, adjust the sloop's course to catch my wayward ass, and then come back out with a grapple line just to bring me back inside.

Dirtside there were at least things like trees, rocks, and buildings to buffer the outness. Upness I'd just had to learn to deal with… and I was coming along. Not perfect, but I was coming along. Being entirely sealed inside Mjolnir helped a _lot_ with that. It was close, and hugged me, and I felt safe since my scientific mind knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the best armor Mankind had to offer. My emotional mind took comfort in that cold truth, and could usually handle looking at open sky through the visor if in fact the visor stayed between me and said open sky.

At the moment, though, my feelings were hurt, and I was going to go and have myself a dandy good pout before I saw Flint again. At first I wasn't sure what to do to facilitate that… after all, if I went and gobbled down my meager chocolate stash _now_, what would I do the next time I hit an emotional low and started craving it again?

Likely, as like now, I'd just take it out on Flint and we'd do this merry-go-round all over again. Man, I hate this. Why couldn't he be the understanding type, and curb off a goodly corner of all our friction? Or maybe that was the point.

Maybe I should go get into my armor, and tell him to get into his, and then I'd drag him down to that weapons locker we'd stripped clean and I'd just let it out. I could pound on him and he could pound on me until we both had said our pieces and counted to ten. And maybe then, _maybe_ then, we could finally talk like civilized beings again.

The thought reminded me that that very action was what had happened just prior to us getting this sloop. I have no idea if it helped disarm him to her christening or not, though. Still, I couldn't have an epiphany and let him think he'd gotten clean away with misbehaving, so I needed to keep pouting until at least after he'd refused to fight me.

If he did that, though… I was liable to jump on his ass with_out_ the armor and I'd ruin every fingernail I owned making him recognize just what a bad idea saying no had been. Savoring the thought of him having to pry me off of him, I began to walk the halls again, reaching the first corner before wondering where he'd gotten off to.

While not large hardly for a spacecraft at all, the sloop was a little like a very large, two-story house. Waaaaaay too much space for only two people. It could crew at something like fifteen or so, but we'd never shared it with anyone. And the other end of the comn line that gave us our orders never asked us to, either. So it made the sloop a fairly empty ship to be in, with just myself, himself, and the cat. And there were days when I never saw the cat at _all_.

Oh, she'd always turn up… good little kitties always do. She liked kibble almost as much as the next cat, after all, and she didn't go for long without coming back for another bite of it. Speaking of which… having 'cat food' on the list of resources we'd reload on at certain resource stops usually raised eyebrows.

As much as he'd grumble about her, I knew Flint was warming up to the girl, and eventually, maybe, he'd quit grumbling. I'd seen him pick her up, pet on her, and set her down, I'd seen him sit there with his chin in one hand and her head in the other, and seem to think while pulling the skin off her little face.

For some reason, she just adores that treatment. It would be so like Grace to have a cat that absolutely loves having her face pulled off, but still. The cat was a source of comic relief most days. She'd get up on Flint's head at night and knead his ears if he wasn't face down, and if he stayed in bed too long, or happened to roll over after she'd gotten up and left, she'd hop back up on him and hook her paws on his bottom lip and _pull_.

He usually got up after that.

But then, there were the days when I feared for her little life, the nights when all her loving affection just wasn't enough, and he'd fling her across the room – and for that matter, me, too – just jumping awake. Then he'd stand there and stare at us both like he had no idea who either of us were, before turning away and – most times – leaving the quarter to go be somewhere else for a while.

The latest round of shooting at shit and being around other people had mitigated that, but now we were back alone again I expected it to happen again very soon. Especially since he was being evasive even when I was _not_ being confrontational with him. Getting out of him what it was that haunted him so badly was impossible. Trying to conclude it for myself was also impossible.

The man simply did not tell stories. If he'd ever written an AAR in his life, I would not have been able to believe my eyes. And on that note, they were all classified if in fact any existed so I couldn't find them to tell. Oh, he'd tell me about so-and-so on random occasions, but he'd never elaborate on how he'd _met_ so-and-so, or why so-and-so had earned an honorable mention.

I only knew what had made most of his scars because he'd tell me that much. Not how, not why, not when. Just what. Big one? Longsword strut. _Huh_? How in the world do you get a _strut_ through your shoulder?? No answer. The long, straight one on the left of his belly? Backside of an energy sword. _Back_ side of an energy sword? What? That makes no sense. I mean, sure, it can happen. But what'd he do, elbow himself in the guts while holding an active one? No answer.

That's the long and the short of Flint. Not terribly talkative, but he'll speak when prompted. I sighed. I wanted him to be more personable, and I _needed_ him to be less cold… but what's a girl to do? I was effectively pretending to be just like him!

.

**ANUNA-02**

It was learning from me. Learned how to blink, learned that blinking was necessary to the use and possession of eyes. Gelatinous ones, anyway. Learned the art of balance on ditigrade legs, learned how the function and use of four-digit hands worked. Learned how to move, fluid and graceful, with all the power a fully functioning mostly organic body had to offer.

I was walked over to a line of monitors with some interesting information on them, and I found out some goodly details about my new self. While none of the text was legible to me, I understood the pictographic parts fine. There was a medically spread diagram of me… the real me… and then another, a counterpart, of the body I was now looking out from.

The differences of the pictures were not that vast, but I had an eye for detail and I understood what the subtleties meant. My new host was an augment, cloned from upgraded DNA stolen from my original person. I now had metal bones, with all the perks and none of the weaknesses of a real, calcite skeleton. My muscles were denser, more compact, and strengthened with what, at a guess, might be carbon fibers. All of this was blended in ways only the word organic can explain; it had holes, fibrous lines, pores, and even cellular structuring, and all of it was bonded much in the same way a normal, organic being would be. Only the basic material one found after cutting through the skin for a look was different.

While justifiably horrified, I knew I was in significantly less danger in my new body than I was in the one I had been born into. That was not necessarily a good thing, considering all the ways I was subject to control in this one, but I was willing to look at it from a logical standpoint at first, if just to keep from losing my mind. Every fiber of my being was strange and new… and stronger and better.

I hated it. I wanted my weak, frail, broken old body back.

I do not know how to fully explain all the nuances of my situation, standing there learning about my new self. There are subroutines of thought, of _knowing_, of self-oriented understanding, that a being that started out organic has. And all of them, the sense of self, the sense of being, of knowing, of understanding how and why and perhaps a little of who and what… those were stripped away like so much tissue, and cast aside. I was left feeling cold, and empty, and purposeless. _Dead_.

There are no gods in the Machine. There is no yearning for enlightenment, for spiritual learning, understanding, or ascension. There is only logical processes, the here, the now, and a little bit of planning for a physical later.

That is never good enough for living creatures. Humans call it a sense of fulfillment. Happiness, perhaps, is another good word. Contentment… knowing in your soul that who and what you are is good enough, if for a breath of a moment, and you can revel in that. I was not. I could not. And I did not.

But I had been stripped from that, from my natural world, and thrust, cold, empty, naked, into the Machine.

It laughed when I begged for death.

At the time I had thought it honorless, pitiless, without mercy for a soul such as mine so stripped from what was good and right, and perhaps even proper as far as chemical, cellular evolution is concerned. Yes, I was born a machine in a way. There are people who consider the 'mechanics' of biology. However, _my_ machine was by _far_ a superior specimen than the one I stood currently wearing. The organic brain, for instance, while quite fragile to disease and decay and even damage, is vastly larger, can hold more, can operate faster, than any artificial computational unit ever built.

By even the Forerunners.

Case in point… the Monitor we found at the Halo installation that the Human Demon destroyed was _rampant_. Sangheilian Elders do not _ever_ get that way.

Now I understood – as only an organic being might – that while yes, I had been hurt, emotionally wounded, to hear that cold, heartless laughter when I begged on my psychological knees, I had misunderstood its true merit.

The Machine did not understand why I wanted to end myself, why I wanted to die, and cease to be. Why was missing. Logically, without a reason, an action is beyond ridiculous. A machine will not engage in randomness. A machine will not consider, or even begin to know how to consider, action without reason. I had mine, yes. My culture, the very culture that had been defied and spat upon when 'Zelisee chose to spare me, demanded it. But _honor_ is an organic excuse for behavior patterns.

Robots can have patterns, even behavior patterns. But, organic life must have _justification_ for those behavior patterns, not merely reasons for them.

In the beginning I imagine that our honor code was a much more logical process. Those who could not perform up to a certain standard would be culled by the local wildlife. So, in the spirit of keeping as many of ourselves alive as possible, we had developed a counter-intuitive behavior pattern, a _culture_, of _learned behaviors_, that later became moot when most of us were dying by entirely unrelated means. Like gunshot wounds. It was still considered very, very culturally honorable to behave in those same traditional ways. Wounded members of a tribe would slow healthy members down… consume without reciprocation. It was best for the health of all to put them out of their misery and leave the body behind. _Leave it on the battlefield, undisturbed_. So that healthy, unwounded warriors would not be lost meaninglessly trying to recover useless dead meat. Logical, yes, but only after one unburied that logical root out from under the cultural tree that had grown out of it.

The Machine did not understand that culture. It could not, subsequently, dig through the cultural lid that I stood upon to reach the logic to make sense out of me. It was _amused_ that I would be so… organic… and be such a fool. I was useful, I was healthy, and I was, as far as a fragile organic being could be, strong. No disease or overt amount of crippling damage wracked my mind or body. I was fit, and could go on. Could be used, like a subroutine in a larger program, for useful things.

Like teaching this monstrosity how to walk, blink, breathe, and flex, in an artificial Sangheilian body. But it was the absolute _shallowness_ of this Machine's existence that horrified and repulsed me… and made me hate it so much. Were I any other form of sentient creature _at all_, I would have felt the same. Nobody likes to be used… especially when _instinct_ (also a non-machine thing) is screaming that there is nothing logically useful about the end results.

My new body was very obviously a weapon.

.

**FLINT-093**

It was instinct that told me I'd been snuck up on. It was logic that told me I was probably too late to bother with jumping around like a spooked chicken, considering who all was available _to_ sneak up on me.

She's a klutz and a hopeless case and she's a lousy Spartan-II but… she's still a Spartan-II. So the odds of my _noticing_ her sneaking up on me, while I am more or less suitably distracted, before she has noticed she's done it to me, are beyond small.

I didn't bother to look up.

Promptly, the cat jumped up from behind me and landed in my lap with as much zeal and gusto as she could – and banged her little head off the edge of the table in front of me, doing it. "Hey!" I protested, startled by the suddenness of her intrusion. Okay, so that disarmed me.

I was fooled, for just a moment, into thinking I had misinterpreted my instinct, and that the body who'd snuck up on me was the cat.

"Hey, Flint."

I flinched, startled again. _Damn_ I was getting too old for this shit… one hand on the cat, I finally raised my head, and looked up at Tori. She wasn't moving… yes, I'd been right the first time. By being stood there and _not moving_ when my gaze found her, I knew I had correctly ascertained that I had been snuck up on. If she had wanted to, she could have pounced… or fired a bullet… or any number of things. And I would not have been paying enough attention to counterstrike, defend, or even get the hell out of her way.

So I was dead to rights.

But there was that _hey_ again. Did that mean she'd dug up something else about me and wanted me to confess something random? I quirked an eyebrow, justifiably confused.

She frowned at me.

What did I do? I hadn't even spoken yet and I had already earned a frown! This is why, (G'wi was the one who asked) I deliberately ask Command for solo ops. They're _peaceful_ when they're not in the action I'm sent to take care of. They're _quiet_, and most of all, they're _non-confrontational_.

All of which Tori most assuredly _wasn't_.

Tired of having to put up with it all, I frowned back. Go away and leave me alone, gah.

She brought her arms up, and crossed them. Then she said something else. "Get your armor."

Mind-blank. "What?"

Her jaw set, and through her teeth, she said, "You have five minutes. After that, I'm just going to pound the crap out of you _without_ it."

I put my other hand on the cat, feeling an odd sense of protectiveness over what could easily and quickly become some collateral damage between us. Kitty was off-limits to Tori's tantrums. Kitty at least knew how to _purr_ from time to time!

Her lips pursed, then relaxed. Then she inhaled deeply and let it out slow. Waiting, waiting… probably hoping I'd stay where I was, so she could have the satisfaction of hitting something other than cold metal. I had… two minutes left (yes, I'm very good at calculating times, even without a watch) when she uncrossed her arms.

I lifted the cat to my chest, and stood up, holding her there. "Tori." I decided, well aware she had been about to jump the gun and go at me early. "You are out of your mind."

Her eyebrows rose all the way up, but it was an accusatory stare, not an incredulous expression. "Oh, _I_ am out of my mind? Look who's talking!" She pointed at… hmm… the cat.

"Just because you're an augment does not mean I can't break you in half." I informed her, bluntly. "And if you give me reason to, I will."

Her face bunched down into a pinched frown again, teetering on an outright scowl. "You can't break me in half, Flint."

I briefly wondered why she was so very certain of that…

"You only have one arm."

Oh, no, she did _not_ – ! The cat squeaked when I turned quick out from in front of that slung fist, avoiding having my bum shoulder socked right out of joint. Ooh, she loved that weak spot. It wasn't for free, though, and just as soon as I found somewhere to put the cat, I'd show her a thing or two about jabbing where she ought not be jabbing. Yes, I was a gimp. And yes, I was fully aware of the fact. But the arm was still _attached_ to me… furthermore, it still _worked_, it was just weak as hell and sometimes it ached like a fiend.

The majority of the shoulder blade attached to the joint being missing might have something to do with that… and the arm being my dominant side only made me seem all the worse off. I was uncoordinated, though, _not_ useless.

Tori followed her initial attack with more of the same, and at first I just stepped and turned and ducked out of the way, making her overextend a few times but always miss. I could tell it was working her up to some major frustration… was it frustration at being unable to get the frustration out? Haha, what an irony.

Finally, unable to think of a good out, I stepped inside her range to the side of her last extension, lifted the tabby off my chest and held her out right into Tori's face. She shrieked in surprise and lurched backwards, having no intention of getting a face full of catsclaws (because kitty was being particularly annoyed with her current treatment) by holding still for that.

With her effectively backed off, I stooped and let the cat go, pausing to watch her run lickety-split away through the door and off down the hall to be somewhere where there were no pesky Humans around. So much for being in my lap.

Oh, but Tori was still there, and she still looked mad. I looked at her again, and sighed. "Tori, this is really getting rather old."

She turned purple.

Why on Earth was Tori turning purple? If she had something to say… I mean, she'd never failed to cut loose with scathing commentary in the past. What was the deal now? She looked like she was about to explode.

Any minute now.

I was very tempted to look at my watch.

.

**TORI-138**

I had had sex with that! I was in _love_ with that! I couldn't believe what I was seeing… or hearing. Was he really _several different people_ in that head of his?? I'd calmed myself down (okay, so not _all_ the way down) before I'd found him, but all I wanted was to see if he'd talk to me… and he gives me this look that says, "oh, fuck off."

That _hurt_.

More still, him throwing the _cat_ in my face hurt. Using an unjudging ally as a weapon against me! And then he just casually sets her on the floor, and he's still not even rumpled that I'd been trying _really hard_ to pick a fight. Honest! _Really hard_. Not even rumpled! I would claim that I wanted to kill him, to go get a magnum and blow his brains on the deck, but that wasn't the truth.

What I really wanted to do was run somewhere and hide, and _cry_.

He couldn't even feel _anger_. He was that cold. Honestly, what could be more heartbreaking? I don't know really how it happened, and I'm pretty sure it was a gradual sneak-up-on-you thing, but I do know that I'm to the point where I'd admit it. I _loved_ him.

For some reason.

I don't know.

But that I couldn't even make him _fight_ with me anymore was _beyond_ hurtful. A billion words jumbled up in my throat, clogging the passage, so none got out. Even if I had opened my mouth, I knew nothing coherent would come out. It'd just be all noise. I didn't need noise. I needed to get it out with words, real words, so that once I'd made a sentence or two I could lash them together and beat the living daylights out of him with them.

He wouldn't even allow me to hit him. Flint doesn't run from things… he'll evade, avoid, whatever. But he doesn't actually _run_ from them. So staying within striking distance yet dodging perpetually out of the way of each swipe was exactly within character for him.

Throwing the cat in my face?

I still have no idea where that came in. I guess if his aim was to make me back off, and quit swiping at him, then it worked. Genius. But.

My face flushed hot, and I knew I was going to burst. I really _was_ going to kill him, and then I'd beat his carcass with my fists until I broke every finger in both hands, if something didn't change. I couldn't handle being alone in the presence of a machine. I just can't do it. Flint was warm to the touch, but emotionally _dead_. Good man, yes. Good company, no. He was just another element of my mechanized surroundings.

All I had left in the world was that cat.

.

**ANUNA-02**

The view was of interest. I had means, I suppose, and some minor influence. My captor allowed me to poke my new fingers through a few things I found in the new place I had been taken to, but while I had done the walking at first, my captor had made sure I went in the direction it wanted me to.

One can only counter-balance so far before one falls over.

So we walked. The corridors were _perfectly_ circular, long running tubes that latched onto one another like biting serpents. Aligned down the middles of the tops and bottoms were flat plates of interlocking floor panels… and I learned that the top ones were floors too when I got to use them. Taking a half-sprung leap at the curved wall, my captor had turned a partial somersault in mid-air, but just when I thought it a fool to end its leap with our body upside down, I was subject to the surprise of landing on the ceiling, feeling no more and no less right side up or upside down than before.

My hooves found their places on the ceiling as easily as they had on the floor. The counter-gravity technologies this place had to offer were impressive, and I walked along just to savor the thought that I was _upside down_ and walking along on the _ceiling_. I felt it a pity that there existed no fellow occupants to watch pass me by or wave to who might look upside down to me.

My captor seemed to consider this reaction with some speculation; I was, evidently, a peculiar creature to it. I could live with that. If the thing never figured me out completely, the merrier I would be. We went for a stroll that felt almost casual, directionless, and looked at the blank-sided corridors for a while. I will admit that while only in partial acceptance of my current situation, my mind had begun to wander after the fifth or sixth corridor we passed. It was fascinating on some levels… but seeing the same thing over and over again, no matter how strange and new at first it might be, always gets old.

Finally, our casual stroll took me through a large circular door that irised open like a steel sphincter, and on the other side, something other than more corridor finally greeted my bored mind. Stretching away from me was a large chamber, the overhead panels set into a decaying ceiling. Some of the panels had fallen, and one or two hung by only a few of the original set of bonding points. I could see dirt, and quite a bit of penetrating root clusters. I do not know if I was taken up a gradual incline to reach that point, but I do know there were no roots prying the roof off of anywhere else I had been thus far.

Not since leaving the pool of oddly selective acid.

It was I who inclined us forward then, spying a few filthy shapes hiding in the receding gloom of the massive, poorly-lit chamber, but my captor allowed me the control to move us towards them. Approaching them, I saw they were larger than I had perceived them at a distance to be; and once I was standing underneath the wing of one that I had supposed myself taller than at first, I fully understood what I was looking at.

They were roughly C-shaped, with one broad, blunted end and one narrow, blade-like pointed end, the breadth and length of the C combining the two ends with all smooth, linear lines. They sat flat to the floor, but I got the feeling that they did not fly like that.

They flew upright, fat end up. My captor showed me how to key entrance, how to mount, how to activate, and then how to fly one. Several tons of dirt cascaded down along with a shattering tree when the bay doors slid back on groaning gear wheels, but though my little C-ship had been buried in the cascade, it tipped back and sliced through the new heap without so much as breaking a rusted port.

I was a little surprised at the craft… we went through the atmosphere with ease, shooting over the tops of the trees' massive countenances inside a whisper's time.

Still… my captor's luck was much like my own.

As we took the plasma to the hooked wing, as we spiraled out of control back through the trees, even as the New Covenant Seraphs zipped past overhead, I sat in the back of my new body's mind and laughed as my captor struggled to comprehend what had just happened. When it queried me for information on the events, I just laughed a little harder.

Oh, how I did laugh.

.

**FLINT-093**

The guns were stripped, cleaned, oiled down and put away in their places. The armor was clean, ablative putty poked into the bullet scarring, and put away in their lockers. There was no reason to play with fate by trying to steer manually through slipspace, and there was already cat food in the little bowl on the floor.

There was quite literally _nothing_ for me to do. I could have sat down, spilled the bowl, and proceeded to sort all the different shapes and colors of cat kibble, but that was just a little too off the deep end, even for me. I wasn't _that_ bored yet. And besides which… the cat wouldn't have given a shit.

One might say that that was about when I found out just what it was Tori had snuck aboard prior to our last launch. I tipped the box up to examine all the corners (I had the time, and I was not in any hurry to get done with not being bored anymore, after all), and had myself a look at the locking mechanism before popping it open and lifting the lid.

That smell came up and smacked me right in the face like a double Brute fist.

_Whoa_.

I offered the random looking contents a puzzled look. Whatever it was, it was vaguely familiar, smelled definitely _sweet_ and came in a lot of small plastic packets. Lifting one out, I examined it closer in hopes of finding out what it was. I found myself reading storage instructions and content ingredients before I finally found the actual label, but by then I already knew what I was looking at.

Tori had a chocolate stash.

I closed the box with a crooked grin on my face, but I left it to her… yes, she was strange, but everyone is entitled to at least one personification of their environment. Mine was yet to be determined, really… I couldn't even hang on to a particular set of armor for long. I guess I was happy so long as I had one, regardless of how old or new it was, or how long I'd had it. If it worked, or if it didn't, I didn't care. Tori certainly wasn't going to be like that. But I knew some basic chemistry (useful for identifying expedient ordinance) and I had a suspicion that she'd gotten a stash of chocolate for more reasons than one.

It was a lot like coffee, or cigarettes.

Hmm. Maybe that's why she was being caustic. Perhaps not. If the cure was that simple, then she'd have lightened up by now.

I left the box behind (yes, I did forget to lock it again. Oops.), and decided to go and see what said other person had done with herself. She was hard to read, but not impossible. I knew she'd gotten something up her craw and was likely out somewhere pouting, though over what I'd never figure. That the sloop was fairly small made my trek a short one… especially given what I knew about her.

I found her in Medical.

When I stepped through the door, she was curled up sitting on one of the gurneys, her feet crossed and her arms wrapped around her knees in a hug. She had her chin tucked into them, and was looking down at a syringe lying at the foot of the gurney in front of her.

I had a feeling I knew what this was… stepping far enough away from the door for it to auto-close, I folded my arms across my chest, and waited. I knew she knew I was standing there… the hiss of a door opening on this sloop was _gunshot_ loud, considering the ambient noise level it usually harbored. Our almost perfect silence made the _Whispers_ seem an empty sloop indeed.

I waited, and waited… I was almost convinced she had nothing to say (a first), when she finally spoke. It had taken her ten minutes. And five seconds.

"Go away, Flint."

I quirked a brow. "To where?"

She sighed. "Never mind."

Okay, here's what I got out of that; Tori was still mad at me, but somehow had drained of the energy or gumption (or both) to bother being proactive about it. And she knew she couldn't command me to do anything – even on principle, ranks aside – so she'd given up on the idea of talking.

That was a little unlike Tori. So too was, I figure, sitting there staring at her booster shot rather than administering it and moving on. If she refused it, she'd probably get something off the cat… or more likely, shrivel up from her minor Flood contamination. But either way, she'd still die. And disease is never like a bullet to the head. It's slow, and it's not pretty. Tori was dancing with the devil, putting off that shot. Maybe there was some psychology behind that. I'm not sure.

Might be the fact that she gets the damn things from _me_.

Damnation, this was getting more and more complicated the more I gave it thought.

I took a breath. "Going to take that?"

She lifted her chin off her knees, and tasted her lips. It looked like her initial answer had gotten sidelined when she'd changed her mind about it, but no new replacement made it up to the forebrain fast enough to keep her from a pause. But even still, I found her answer of considerable quality; she shook her head.

"Why?" Logical following query, right?

"You have to ask?"

Um… huh? Okay, now I'm stumped. "Well… yes."

And then she shot me a nice, toasty, rot-in-hell glare. Well, at least I was getting some good old _normal_ Tori out of her, sans this new, strange, morose version of her. It was unfamiliar, and I didn't like the version any better than the original. So… might as well shoot for familiarity, since there's nothing else holding one's value over the other.

"Pistol'd be faster."

She rolled her eyes, and looked away, dropping her chin back onto her knees. "Go away, Flint."

What, a guy can't offer helpful advice? I know she'd somehow gotten to this point without venturing towards the apprehension or the stress levels to call it post-traumatic. This had nothing to do with war, or even what she'd seen during the few fights I'd gotten her into. (total of fifteen, thus far)

She was somehow talented enough to come up with issues from _somewhere else_, somewhere that I had yet to venture. Or, conversely, if I had, they hadn't led me to similar ends. So I admit I was still a little on the uncertain side. She looked… shall we say… sad?

"Going away requires some footwork, you know." She told me, evidently tired of my just standing there. "Start walking."

Okay, so I can be something of a pain myself some days. I walked – but I went _forward_. And why not? She raised her head again when I got at arm's distance, and I saw her mouth open again when I reached out and swiped her booster shot off the gurney. I popped the protective plastic cap off the needle and nailed her in the arm – er… through the sleeve, yes… and yes, I know that that's not precisely wise – before she had the first sound out.

Her face scrunched up, and then "Ow!" fell out of her open mouth.

I let her rub her arm as I poked the needle back into the plastic cap, pretending for the most part to be ignoring her. I turned away, aware she hadn't moved much more than her other arm yet, and paced to the dispenser unit in the wall. I'd gotten the syringe flipped through the hole and about three quarters of the way turned back around when I first saw her fist … but there wasn't enough cognizant time left to process it, and then send down the neural commands to my muscle structures to make me duck.

So that's why I got hit.

My head knocked off the wall behind me, but I didn't even have the time to recoil (physics there) before she came back and did it again. I got my spinning brains working again after that one, though, and got an arm up under her third strike, swiping it to the side.

So she hit me with her other fist.

Damnation! I had no idea she was ambidextrous! The feel of an awkward non-dominant sided punch is always different from a dominant-sided punch. And while I _know_ I had her right in mine, her left had come up quick as a viper and got me square with all the dexterity, all the aim, and all the power of her right. She got me twice from that angle, too, before I got tired of it and stuck my elbow between us and knocked her in the chin with it. I don't like to hit things squarely (no, not even soft fleshy faces) with my left anymore, because there's too much recoil sent through the shoulder.

But the elbow strike would put all the processing power straight through my forearm and into my chest, where I could handle it. And where I wasn't gimpy. Her head rocked back, but I knew she'd already had her jaw set or she'd never have slung the first fist. Little something about Tori I'd learned a while back. For some reason she always sets her jaw (and sometimes will outright clench it) _before_ she slings a punch. So when I saw her lips curl back into a signature grimace, I knew that her earlier challenge was now in play.

She wanted to fight me.

Had I a third hand, I would have stuck it to my face and groaned into it.

Using my grasp of her imprisoned right, I slung her out and then tugged her backwards in again to spin her out. She stepped right into the toss, though, and ducked her head down to slip under my elbow with her own arm over her head. Dance move. To counter, I brought that arm down and cinched it down tight, squashing her against my side so she couldn't hit me anymore.

When her balance shifted, I dropped my other arm and caught her traveling knee shy of its target. Using that, I slung her back out away with her right arm and lifted her bodily off the floor from wrist and knee. It was awkward for both parties, but it was more so for her. She'd be unbalanced, off the floor and more than likely going to wind up lying on it if she ever got loose.

But I didn't have enough strength in my left to hold her that way, even if she'd never squirmed once, so I ended the lift in a casual toss. If I actually _threw_ her in here… that might cause some interesting damage, and for god's sakes, this was _Medical_. I didn't need my patch station getting trashed. She didn't even squeal when she flipped over and smacked face-down into the floor. She just stuck her elbows out, rolled onto a knee and jerked back towards me with her rising step.

When she got close enough, I brought my right arm back, but I saw she was watching that, so I snuck in a surprise pop with my left. Now, that being my dominant side made it a considerable pop indeed, regardless of the state of repair of the arm in question. I knew how to use it, under any and all conditions. That's the perks of having a dominant side.

Tori counter-balanced without backing up, accepting the full brunt of the hit in order to send in a reply. I dodged another aimed at my face, but then she grabbed a fistful of the t-shirt I had on and yanked me forward. She wasn't braced well enough to do much with that, but 'not much' and 'nothing at all' are two very different demons. She dug that ambidextrous left into my bad shoulder like it was her dominant right, either aiming to decapitate the limb completely or reopen the old hole.

I turned just out of physical principle – even a block of steel would have spun if glanced across the side that hard! – but before I let the well-anticipated feeling that hit would grant me in, I brought up my right behind her head and caught her across the neck. Holding her firmly like that, I finished my swipe by bringing her forward the rest of the way, and smacked my forehead off of hers.

Funny that… I hadn't done a head-bang since the last time I'd fought Innies. I'd been a kid then. And I do _not_ remember head-bangs sounding like a pair of unripe watermelons connecting at bullet velocity. _Crack_! Mine hurt. They usually do… but she reeled back in a dizzy stagger with a wet smear across her hairline that was slowly crawling down towards her nose.

Oh, so Tori has fair skin, then, over all that attitude? Could have fooled me! I set my teeth and tried not to give her the satisfaction of seeing me grimace, but I reached up and poked myself in the forehead just to see if I'd done myself the same way I'd done her. I hadn't… I hadn't even gotten any of her blood on me. Hmm! That'd be a first. I sent the probing hand across my front and hugged my other elbow to my side, unwilling to so much as nod my head while the ordinance was going off inside that shoulder.

To say it hurt would have been the understatement of the year. To say I was annoyed that Tori was the reason I'd earned that agony would pull a close second. She was UNSC, she was ONI, she was Human, and she was _supposed_ to be an _ally_. And that's never getting to the part where her odd behavior towards me from early on gets mentioned.

She quit staggering back after the fifth step, but it was enough distance for comfort. I was just glad nothing around us had gotten mixed up in the fight, and I hoped that didn't change. She had both hands on her head, hiding most of her face, but I knew she was holding her forehead and not her face. If I'd hit her lower down with that strike, I'd have broken something. Her nose, a cheekbone. A tooth. Something. But foreheads are notoriously harder than anything in the face. She'd live.

She stood there like that for almost a full minute, likely trying to weather down the headache, before finally giving an audible sniff and raising her head. Her hands came down, the blood from the split in her scalp all over one of them. That traveling droplet had, I noted, reached her nose and turned down the side of the bridge to follow it to her upper lip.

For just an instant I felt sorry I'd done it, but the instant passed, and I felt justified. She'd picked the fight, she'd not wanted to quit, and hey… what's a little head wound in exchange for what she did to my shoulder? On the flip side… it did make her quit.

"Have something you wanted to say, Tori?" I asked. Remarkably enough, I was able to speak without the brain-shriveling agony getting any airtime. I spent the following moment just marveling at that little tidbit.

But then the look she gave me sidelined that thought train.

.

**TORI-138**

I never found the collarbone.

It was just plain _gone_. He'd always hated it when I messed with that shoulder, so it was something I hadn't realized. No wonder it fell out of whack so easily. Even the bones weren't really attached anymore. I knew I'd buried my fist into that scar as deep as I could make it go, and I had felt it cave like a stomach, not like a shoulder. Soft. Pliable. Very empty on the inside.

Having him take that iron ball he calls his head and smack me with it did cure me of my initial ideas of pounding on him until I didn't feel angry anymore, but it did not cure me of feeling raw and abused. On the other hand, I couldn't really blame the guy for wanting to get me off of him after that last hit I'd landed.

When I finally got my face out of my hands, though, and I looked up at him, what I saw almost convinced me he'd turned into a machine. His expression was only a little miffed… not pained, not agitated, nothing like that. Just a little miffed.

And while he was holding the elbow of his bad arm…

"Have something you wanted to say, Tori?" He sounded like a goddamn robot. He didn't even _sound_ hurt! For a moment he looked like he might be about to go off on some random subroutine and do some calculations or something else robotic like that, but when I gave him my answer – the best twisted expression I could muster – it evidently canceled those travel plans.

He looked at me like he wasn't sure what I was anymore.

No. No, I did not have something I wanted to say. I might once have, but the absolutely artificial look in those steel gray eyes… were they steel, really steel? … that made me shake my head, and turn away. I could wash my head in the sink in the head. I didn't need to doctor it here. Most of the blood on my face already felt crusty and dry, so the odds of it bleeding any more after now were fairly small.

Despite how headwounds – regardless how little or how big – just bleed and bleed and bleed. I kept him in my peripheral as I walked towards the door, but he never moved. He just watched me go. I went through and out, and once I heard the door hiss shut, I lit out into a run.

_Pistol'd be faster_. No shit, smartass. Thing was… I hadn't decided which of us to use it on yet. Me? Or him? Or, conversely, him and then me? But then who would take care of the cat? She didn't deserve our problems. And leaving her alone in slipspace on a sloop with a pair of dead bodies and no way to get at the cat food… that just wasn't humane. But there was no way in hell I was going to shoot the cat.

No way in hell.

I made the head and elbowed the door open, unwilling to wait for it to slip away into the wall on its own. Once in, I went to the nearest sink, and turned on the hot side. I let it run full blast for a while, not even touching it, just letting the steam soak through my skin and trying not to think about what had just happened.

I was going to kill him. I really was. I just hadn't come to terms with the thought yet… the action was already taking place. Raising my head, I looked at the foggy reflection of the woman in the steamed-up mirror, and inhaled.

"You are in a shitload of trouble." I told her. Lifting a hand from the edge of the sink, I wiped it across the mirror to clear it. Through the smear, I could see the tiny little split in my skin, and spent a moment marveling at the massive amounts of blood that had gushed out of it. "Wow, seems like overkill."

I got a hand towel and washed my face off, leaving the area around the split alone just so the newly formed scabs wouldn't get washed off and then start bleeding again. I could cover the split with a single fingertip, but I was not interested in walking around for an hour with a finger on my forehead. Especially considering how tender the area was. If I had not already been a nice deep sienna in skintone, I knew I would have had a lovely little bruise. If I didn't get a goose egg, I'd be surprised.

Leaving the head, I walked until I found myself on the bridge.

I stood in the doorway and looked around until I felt certain I'd come here for a reason. When the cat walked up behind me and raised her tail before walking up against my leg, I made a decision. Bending, I scooped her up, and after stepping inside, I turned and made sure the door was locked behind me. I put the cat in the copilot's seat before sitting down, taking a moment to go over the control board with my eyes and re-run over everything Flint had taught me about its use and function.

Finding the control I wanted, I turned the seat to face it fully, and called the console out of standby. There was an area monitor, but I ignored it for a moment as I punched in the all-too-familiar command sequence. Reading computer coding for thirty years will make it into something of a second language, after all, and part of the sciences happening in the asteroid laboratory had been based around programs and their use and function.

I was no hack… but I could create simple programs and even alter subroutines to do what I wanted. I could even read off existing coding and know what I was looking at. If it was digital, it had coding.

I wrote in a small one, and plugged it into the main feed before opening the area monitor and looking to see where Flint was. I found him easily, but that made me pause. He hadn't left Medical, it seemed, and after I'd left he'd had himself a seat on one of the gurneys. He was still sitting there. Still had his bum arm cradled.

But now he was wearing that pained grimace I'd failed to find on his face before. My fingers paused over the control board, my eyes studying that picture. Was it some part of Spartan history that I'd missed, locked away in that lab? Few words, no emotions.

Was it all a mask?

That led me back around into another spiraling, angry internal rant, and before I knew I was angry again my hand had begun to tap in the sequences in. If he couldn't trust me enough to let me know he wasn't a robot, then he just might really need to be slapped around a little bit. Once it was in, I sat there and watched the video feed. I wondered how long it would take him to notice, given that he wasn't moving and he wasn't trying to leave. I had sealed the door with a false override telling the onboard emergency systems that the hull over Medical had been breached. That door would never open. Not until someone hauled us into drydock and 'sealed the breach' so it would 'hold pressure' again. Or, alternatively, someone convinced the computer that such a thing had happened.

It took about a minute.

First he raised his head, a puzzled look on his face, and he looked around. I tucked my chin into a hand and propped that elbow on the lip of the control board, where it wasn't going to interfere with any of the depressable keys. Flint looked bewildered at first; as if he wasn't sure why the air was getting thin. When he finally bothered to get to his feet, though, it had been almost three minutes. He walked calmly to the door, and discovered that it didn't open automatically anymore. I saw him spread a hand on it, as if pondering that.

He left the door for a moment, turning away to look over the expanse of Medical once before turning back again, and promptly popping the control panel off the wall with his bare fingers.

I wondered what he thought he was going to be doing, but then I saw him reach through the access hole and yank out the entire fistful of wires, contacts, and chipboards. Reverting to a default maintenance mode, the door unsealed and slid open. I saw him take a step back from the newly opened passageway, as if there had been a sudden sucking of air from the hall, and it made him hesitate for a moment before he stepped through.

I sighed.

There went that theory. I began to absently punch in the codes to undo what I'd done, more to make the access vents in Medical quit trying to suck the air out of the whole ship, while the ones outside Medical were all pumping it in again. We'd have some interesting pressure lows floating around if I didn't, and the humidity would get _really_ funky.

If Flint didn't fix what he'd done to the door later, I knew I would; and not because I had any overt duty to clean up after him, but more because that sort of thing was a dandy way to pass the time when one is trapped aboard a sloop with no one but oneself for company. Flint surely didn't qualify, not if he was going to pretend to be a machine until he died.

I almost felt sorry for him in that respect. It was almost a default mode for the guy… and if it was in fact a default mode, then perhaps I had signed myself up for a hell of a lot more trouble than it was worth when I'd decided to move in with him. I guess I didn't necessarily have to pursue anything personal. Technically, I knew all about the fraternization between officers thing. That wasn't what had me miffed. It was that he treated it like something that didn't exist until I dragged the cat outside and made damn sure he didn't get any sleep.

It usually took some doing.

The problem began at the point where I had already made that leap. Sure, he was coasting along like nothing had changed. And I'm sure he wouldn't even miss me if I dropped dead on one of our extraneous combat runs. Take note, ship report home, continue on. That'd be Flint. So going back to being 'just friends' was going to be a little less of a hardass haul than for most. That did not mean it wasn't still going to be one.

I didn't necessarily _have_ to pursue anything personal. But that was the catch. I already had, and now I was heartbroken about it. I needed a different avenue of understanding, obviously… I could, if I peeked in secret, see the pain. But I had never once found any malicious intent.

Maybe that was why my heart got so attached.

Damn thing needs a reboot.


	4. Surviving Death

**4: Surviving Death**

**ANUNA-02**

I was dizzied, and I could feel the pain acutely. It brought home just how close to it all I really was… constrained observer or not, I was still very much a part of this body, and instinct insisted I take care of it the same way I had cared for my old body. I jerked control from the frantic Machine and leapt away from the cockpit almost too late, and I felt the heat and shrapnel lance across our back.

The Machine was spinning madly, trying to figure out how I had known that was going to happen. I refused to comment, focused instead on what should have been a moment of hyper-sensitivity and awareness. But I remained normal, nominal… sluggish almost.

Where were my adrenal glands?

I heard my Machine counterpart hiccup. Those things have a _use_??

Duh!

Annoyed, I kicked out the hatch and jumped through, right into open freefall. I let the first branch zip past without even trying to catch it, aware that the speed of a falling object of my weight and mass under the current environment and gravity (air density matters!!) would be sufficient to get me clear of the ship if it decided to pop… but that I would never be able to climb down fast enough to make similar distance in similar time.

I wrestled with the Machine over that for a while before I ultimately lost, and we caught the next branch down (too close) and jerked a shoulder out of joint for our trouble. The cry of pain was not mine, though I undoubtedly shared the sentiment. Our grip failed us, and we fell anew, this time heading down falling with a slight backwards flip. If we struck a branch badly at a bad time, our back would snap apart and then we'd be a useless, lame, and likely paralyzed jellybag.

And I knew from experience that that was not an ideal condition for an environment like this one. There were a dozen different varieties of Sentinel out there, and while they all wanted to kill each other, they also would team up briefly to eliminate intruders.

And unless I had the great fortune to come in contact with my creator's brand and model first, we both would be in a massive amount of trouble for a very short and irrelevant time. And then it would be overwith. I saw our other arm come up, and we twisted bodily to the left, right in time to smash off the next branch. _CRUNCH,_ and that dislocated shoulder went right back in.

Huh… interesting way to utilize falling against a branch. If our bones had not been made out of metal, though, that impact still would have done more damage than aid, and the point made would have been laughably moot. The Machine howled anew, but we had been slowed by that impact, and when the next branch came up, we struck it squarely and chest-first. I clawed for control, wanting desperately to shove off and be gone from the tree, but the Machine did not allow it.

Instead, we bore the brunt of our ship erupting, and taking out the entire top of the tree we had crashed it into. As we tumbled through the air anew, I mentally crossed my arms and grumped into the Machine's ear with a dozen different ways to reiterate 'I told you so'.

I got only cold silence.

When the next to last branch went by, we reached out and clawed at it, but while we caught some traction and tore claw material away for thirty meters down the trunk, we did not catch enough to stop entirely. I was satisfied with that, though, and when we hit the ground the Machine let me have our legs so we wouldn't break them. It did not know how to balance a long drop, after all, even if we wore a body capable of surviving one.

There is beauty, art and chaos in a living being that permits it to adapt through motion to its environment. And motion, conversely, that interacts with those living beings that makes them who and what they are.

I balanced us, flexing correctly to the right amount of tension and resistance, and instead of breaking our legs or landing in a splash on our back, we dropped right to our hooves neatly and then sat promptly on the ground before rolling once over our own heads.

I was killing momentum doing that. The gathering crouch was a way to alter direction for the tuck, and the roll was to extinguish the final breath of rushing impact. I brought us back up to our hooves again, balanced and still with plenty of breath to spare… I do not know what the Machine thought of that, because as soon as we were upright again, I was again stripped of motor function and pushed to the back of our forebrain to watch as I was walked away from the crumbling, collapsing tree.

Poor tree.

.

**FLINT-093**

I brought us out of slipspace to a grand view of the stars, all dimmed somewhat by the closer presence of a red giant some fifty thousand AU's away. I was not supposed to be no fifty thousand AU's off course.

I looked carefully at the control board, then, wondering what I'd done wrong. Slipspace hasn't been this badly miscalculated before in a _long_ time. And surely my luck wasn't so rotten that I'd wind up with the first modern-design sloop with the Shaw-Fujikawa engine that _did not work_.

But the numbers I'd run were correct… I'd come out almost to an inch right where I was supposed to come out. Right where I'd been told to go. Right where that damn ONI spook had told me to go.

God dammit.

I was spooling up the sublight engines and getting ready to pop on over to that red giant (for it surely must be my target, seeing as how it's the closest thing, right?) when I saw the slipspace flower bloom right in front of me.

I took one look at it and guessed I had enough clearance to not get swallowed or damaged, but it was still _very_ close. Thirty thousand kilometers. Maybe a little closer. Touching the fire, really, and pretending not to get burned. I let my fingers sit still over the half-finished command sequence for a moment as I watched that display, wondering what exactly was fixing to dump out over on top of my ass.

The slipspace flower was only getting bigger… and bigger… and surely there existed no ship, no vessel, that could _possibly_ require a slipspace window that big. My eyes were all the way open, and if I was breathing anymore I wasn't aware.

I very suddenly did not want to be anywhere near a ship that big… just when I thought the entire universe might get swallowed in this monster before the damn vessel decided to come through, it snapped upwards, yanked back and was gone. The residual sparkle of closure as the rift in realtime healed over was hidden around the horizon line of…

A _planet_???!!! Better!! Sharp light lanced down through the forward viewports and lit me up like a plasma grenade, the sun all bright and hot and very much present in a place where the space had been empty just a moment before.

I don't know if I squeaked or not. If I didn't… well… let's just say that I did.

Watching that shit happen _on top of me_ was _scary as hell_. I thought for sure I was about to get swatted right out of the sky, but then the big ball of dirt and water and air swung idly away, continuing an uninterrupted orbit off through space. A slight tremble of tension releasing ran through me, and I let out a shaky breath. I suddenly didn't like this mission a whole lot more than I hadn't in the past.

Hanging in orbit in the upper atmosphere were the remains of the Elites' cruiser, and coming around the bend of the southern hemisphere was what looked like the nose. Shaking off the suddenness of my introduction to the area, I began recomposing my reply to that ONI spook… I suddenly really liked him, a whole lot. He'd not put me where that slipspace window had been. That was some thirty thousand kilometers' calculations that a lot of people get _wrong_. It's not normally enough to bother most slipspace travelers, but in my case it would have been the end of me, my sloop, and all trace that it or I had ever existed.

That's the thing about slipspace. Once it has you, it has you, and if you don't have a pair of scissors capable of going through the fabric of the universe, then it will _always_ have you. Still, while I had a very bad, crawling feeling about getting anywhere near that planet-with-a-slipspace-engine, I still had to at least fly in close enough to check it out.

So, with a bit of reluctance and a fading adrenal buzz, I brought us in.

We cruised smoothly through the once-disturbed space, giving me some appreciation for whatever evil had installed a slipspace drive into a planet and it's sun. The transition had been flawless, without any of the junk one might suppose would have been sucked through a transitory hole that big. Or, maybe, the fact that it had only just opened enough to permit the planet and it's sun left little to no room for such flotsam? I don't know, and I honestly don't think I want to find out.

Still, the environmental repercussions after an action like that have got to be massive… and I found out first hand. The first hint was ignorable, and sadly I did just that. Sensors picked up some minor turbulence. Turbulence in vacuum is nigh nonexistent, because the eddies usually only go in one direction if there ever are any. Ships passing through or over them feel a soft tug in whatever direction, but most of the time their initial vectors are too strong to be affected beyond having noticed.

The _Whispers_ noticed… and after it told me about it and I'd noted as much, ready to dismiss it as a normal vacuum eddy (those tend to pop out around recent slipspace ruptures, but they disappear after about an hour) when it happened again.

And that's when the scary part happened – no eddy, no matter how big or how powerful, has the magnetic or geothermic capacity to shake the _gravity_ generators. Nor, if I recall correctly, can they cause a flash-heat spike on the _inside_ of any given ship. Well, first I was rattled in my seat, and then the air around me got _really_ hot.

I was about to suck in a breath and (more than likely) go what the hell, when my console went completely dark. My what the hell turned into something tenfold as profound. I jerked out of the pilot's seat and discovered quickly thereafter that the power to the whole ship was gone. The door didn't open… and I knew that yanking the control circuitry wouldn't make much difference to a dead system. So I pried it open with my hands, shouldering the opening wide enough to pass through.

I hadn't made any kind of note of where Tori had been – or the cat, for that matter – prior to the power failure, but that it was ship-wide meant very bad things. I'd run down the length of the uninterrupted corridor to the next door I wanted through before it all came back online suddenly, but I went through anyway.

I wanted my armor like nobody's business right now.

On my way through, I hit the intercom on the control panel next to the door, and waited for the telling soft click to tell me it was on. It took three times as long as it should to happen, but I guessed it was probably sluggish due to the sudden power loss. Even under ideal conditions, a running system hates to crash right in the middle of a task. Every computer known to man hates that. And most will complain to the user once it's been restored, too.

I'd gotten the locker open and the Mjolnir pulled out before the click came through, but I almost didn't hear it. What I did hear, though, was Tori.

_"What the hell is going on??"_ She'd likely had the time to figure out something was wrong, wherever the hell she'd gone off and hidden, and maybe even enough time to figure out the intercom system was also down.

"Get up here and get into your armor, Tori." I answered, tugging myself into the first bits of my own. "Hurry."

_"Right… on my way."_ She could be annoying, I'd found, but she was not above doing what was logical under bad conditions. Perhaps not _all_ of her training as a Spartan II had been lost.

I was fully clad and on my way out when I saw her down the hall, but I was only able to continue to see her there because I had my helmet on when the power died yet again. That time, I heard the enginery wind down. A moment later, I also heard Tori shoulder into the wall with an audible thump.

"Flint!" She called. "I can't see!"

I turned away and headed for the bridge again. Unless active systems had recalibrated enough to revive the door command, my path – and hers, too, since I'd been standing in the doorway of the quarter when it all died – should still be open. "Just keep going forward until you find the doorway. It's still open."

I made it to the first juncture where I needed to make a left when gravity changed… and with the power off, that was going to be a weaker counter-force than usual aboard our sloop. I went pinwheeling backwards down the wrong hall when I suddenly found myself on a very steep grade, but I heard Tori shriek before she was out of earshot.

Must have found the door and been slung inside.

I hit the wall on my back, but it felt like the floor. Getting myself rolled around so I could get 'up', I found myself feeling gravity slowly shifting to the ceiling. Hmm… either we were rolling over inside the planetary gravity well – and going to burn up in atmo, if that was the case – or something about the slipspace eddies was a bit more frightening than I'd thought. I stood and waited, aware there was really nothing I could do, until the ceiling was the steeply graded floor.

Then, as it slowly leveled off, I began to climb it, and when it was a shallower rise, I stood into a run. I managed to make it back to the bridge before we'd rolled to the opposite wall, but I found myself upside down to all the controls. First I looked up at them, then down at the forward viewports that were _supposed_ to be above me.

I saw stars.

Huh?

The lights flickered once, the engines howled a single, dying note, and I had enough time to crouch down and tuck my arms over my neck before it all came back online for a third time, slamming me hard into the real floor. It hurt, but not as much as it would have had I been out of the Mjolnir. I think I left a dent, though, because getting up again I could hear something metallic crinkling in my wake.

I went first to the main control console, and began punching in data. If I was going to have to fight for control, and if I was going to have to fly blind half the time – blind and powerless, no less – then I needed to be on the ball. For the very first time since being commissioned to the sloop, I threw the harness over my head and strapped in, more to keep from being tossed out of my seat when next the gravity engines failed us.

What happened next should have made me green as an emerald for the rest of my natural life; fully clad and fast as a bullet, Tori appeared in my peripheral, dumping into the copilot's seat and strapping in quick. How she had managed to get dressed during the roll and drop, and then traveled up to the bridge, I will never know. But I was, I admit, jealous of her for the ability.

Still, her timing was good enough to pass, and I was glad she was there. "What's going on?" She asked, reaching for the console and pulling her chair inward towards them on the running track. Close enough to reach them, she locked it down so it wouldn't slide back again. "Why does the power keep dying?"

"I couldn't give you a scientific explanation, Tori, but I have a hunch." I answered, feeling justifiably annoyed. I hadn't been tossed around by a non-combatant in a _long_ time. Flight control finally came to me right as we rolled back around so the planet was above us, and I got a good view of the lashing storm we were about to nosedive into right before we actually nosedived into it.

"We're there?" Tori asked. "Already? That was fast… so what's your hunch?" She turned her golden visor at me, but I ignored the look.

"Just shut up and see if you can't get me the manual auxiliaries."

"Uh… okay." Even Tori can understand when not to waste time arguing, I guess. It is one of her few redeeming qualities. But unfortunately, she loves to multitask, and as she ran her hands over the copilot's control board, she asked again. "What's causing the power outages, Flint? And if it died so completely, why didn't it stay dead?"

"See that?" I spared a half-heartbeat to point a finger at the planet right before the upper atmosphere came up and swallowed us. The event happened with a tremendous, thunderous _bang_ and shook the ship some more.

"Yeah."

"That's why."

"The planet's doing this?" Tori asked, right as I finally got what I'd asked her for. I turned the counterspin against our lolling roll, and got an equalized descent going. It was enough to let me breathe again, but not enough to save us if we ever hit dirt.

"It dropped out of slipspace." I answered, trying to get some of the automatic functions to actually do something. The controls claimed they worked… but I wasn't seeing any evidence through the forward viewports, so I was unconvinced.

"That's… isn't that impossible?" She sounded as if she'd been about to simply state the impossibility of such an event when she'd changed it to a question instead. I smirked.

"Obviously." Did I really need to finish that sentence? "Where's the cat?"

"I don't know." Tori answered. "Didn't see her."

I hoped she'd been tucked into one of those impossibly small spaces… it would have kept her from getting hurt when we did our shipwide antics. But I hadn't seen her either, so it was as much a guess as anyone could offer.

"Are we going to crash?" Tori asked. For some reason she sounded as if it had been a casual question. Like she didn't care one way or the other, but it'd be nice to know.

I looked at her. "Probably." Why did I find that amusing?

She looked back. "Okay."

I looked back at what I was doing, feeling puzzled. First she tries to rip me apart, and now this? Maybe her stint with the booster shot really hadn't been a joke. But then, why'd she bother getting into her armor, like I'd told her to? I understood that some things were reflex and couldn't be explained or helped much. But if she was really as calm and collected as she sounded, that shouldn't have come into play.

Reflex is a lot like habits. You do them under stress. Not just because. Just because allows too much room for cognizant thought processes, and those tend to interrupt things like reflex and habitual motion.

Tori was, I realized, and likely always would be, a mystery to me.

I looked at the controls again. "Do… we have shields?"

Tori looked at her end of them. "Hard to say. Some of the monitors are spinning madly. I'd guess yes, or it'd never go over that end, but don't put much faith in them. They could be weak, or flickering as bad as the internal lights were a moment ago."

Right on cue, the lights went out, and the controls went dark. Rain lashed against the forward viewports, the action sudden and startling.

"Yeah… we had shields." I decided.

"How's our vector?" Tori asked, calmly.

"It _used_ to be fifteen by three by eight, versus twelve by ten by thirty. What it is now is anyone's guess." I answered, almost as coolly. If she was being infectious, then it wasn't so bad. But at least she wasn't being _panicky_ and infectious. "Tori?"

"Uh huh?" Now she sounded distracted. When I looked over, she was looking out the windows at the lancing rain.

"You high on too much chocolate or something?"

Her head whipped around and she looked at me, at first silent. Then she shook her head and laughed. "Oh, you found that, did you?"

I found myself on the verge of a responding grin and wiped it off. Looking back at my controls, I wondered what she'd _really_ gotten into… because unlike me, Tori was as susceptible to chemical alteration as the next guy. I had a feeling it wasn't the candy at all.

The rain abruptly quit, and the water on the hull whisked away, some of it flying off and some of it drying in place, giving me a good feel for just _how_ fast we were still going. Fast enough to shatter ourselves on a good, solid rock face if we found one before the power came back on.

Tori crossed her arms. "Shouldn't we be on fire, or something?"

"Maybe." I shrugged. "We did just shoot the heart out of a rainstorm."

She shook her head. "Water is no cure for friction."

"That's true." I looked back down from the windows at the control board, and almost before I could take in the dark screens and the unlit keys, it flashed alight, the sound of our engines returning to life a stark and sudden sound. "Here we are." I tapped in some of the boot sequences just to see if the restarts were complete. If it was partial again, we'd fall in a sideways direction (due to speed) for a little longer.

And the longer we fell unpowered, the more of a parabolic arc we'd have, and the less option or time for correction we'd have. I for one did not want to borrow a magnum for personal use, even if Tori was hinting at apathy.

She remained motionless for a while longer, before reaching forward again and tapping on some of the displays, one of which was still spinning madly. "Looks like we've got a reboot error here." She said, calmly. "Should get that looked at… later."

I blinked in surprise when we sheared the top out of what _had_ to be a tree of some kind, the screeching sound almost loud enough to penetrate the hull. Leaves splashed across the viewport for a moment before flying away, even as I directed us upward again to keep from plowing a furrow in that forest… if in fact it was a forest and not a freestanding tree on a plain. If it was a forest we weren't as low as I thought, but if it was a lone tree then the odds of the wind letting it get very tall at all were slim, and we were seconds from plowing that furrow.

"Hey." Tori commented. "You hit a tree."

"No, we _crashed_ into the tree. I wasn't flying." I protested, getting the air brakes to respond finally and bringing us around in a swinging arc. In doing that I began to see little dots no bigger than man-sized appearing on the scanners. All of them – electromagnetic, systemic, heat, and motion. Looking up, I could see nothing of the sort gathering out of the trees ahead of us, but now we were going slower I could actually tell they were trees, rather than greenish blurs.

"Hey." Tori said again. There was that _hey_… twice. She pointed at the viewport. "What's that?"

"Whatever it is, it's showing a silhouette on the scanners." I answered, still unable to tell what 'that' was supposed to be.

"It is?" She looked down. "Oh, yeah. It is."

"Tori… where were you when the power first failed?" If she was going to psyche out on me, I needed to know before it happened. And if she had somehow found some way to dope out on something in Medical, I also needed to know. Doing that would make her a bigger liability than merely being normal old Tori.

She proved evasive, though. "Why do you want to know?"

I sighed. "Never mind." We were slow enough, now, and hopefully going to retain power, that I could land us. And just ahead, on the side of what looked like a capped mountain (it had friends) was a shelf in the rock that looked good enough to park two or three _Whispers_ on. Good as any, really… unless it was broken, fragile, or otherwise unsuitable.

I did a quick scan, and found it suitable enough.

Good… time to get outside and find out why we couldn't keep power. And if I had to tie Tori to the landing struts, I would… though between her augmentations (and the recent workouts) and her Mjolnir suit, I'd likely need to use some landing cable to do it with any effectiveness.

Oh well.

.

**TORI-138**

He seemed to be in a better mood for some reason.

It was nice, I admit. But it was also weird on him, after spending so very long being so very hard to live with. The commentary kept me distracted from what promised to be certain doom, too. Asked about the cat. Don't know anything about the cat, she's being evasive again.

Asked about the chocolate. Okay, that one was funny.

I was doing my very best not to panic and become unreasonable, as it would look fairly awkward if we actually did survive landing. And landing looked to be unquestionable; the planetary gravity well had sucked us in, and without power we'd been helpless to resist. So down we went.

And remarkably, we were able to keep power on the last leg of our descent, so Flint got us landed neatly on the shoulder of a mountain that looked like it was a rough diamond. Most of the mountains behind it all looked the same, though, so it might just be junk rock with little glass or crystal protrusions on the surface.

It was pretty, though. I liked it.

I was looking down at my displays, almost expecting them to go dark again, but they didn't… at least, not before I looked up again, when Flint got my attention by throwing his seat harness back over his head and standing up. He turned and headed for the door, looking like he expected to do something once he got through it.

Curious, I unbuckled, slid the chair back and got up to go after him. Part of me wanted to go and look for the cat… but part of me insisted she'd be alright and I could leave her be. So on after Flint I went, pondering random things and wondering what we were going to do since being at a distance cooped in our sloop didn't seem to be acceptable to the planet we were here to investigate. I followed him down through the same passage we'd used to get to the bridge a while ago, and then on past the quarter and then through and into the arms locker. I hesitated to see what Flint thought we'd need, then pulled my scored and re-blued MA off the latching rack. He cast me a look when I did that, but I half wondered what it really meant… was he taking note of his environment, because I'd made a noise?

Or was he contemplating the wisdom of allowing me to have the MA? Call me weird… but I had a feeling it was the latter. There is only so much a tinted visor can conceal, after all. I tried to ignore the feeling – and the look – as I moved up to the ammunition cabinet and loaded the gun, then an ammunition belt and put it on.

I hesitated on the decision of what to take as a sidearm, though – the SPNKr? We only had one of those, but every time we went out I wanted so badly to take it along, just to see what the rockets looked like in flight… and what they did to a particularly annoying target. I'd never seen Flint use it… maybe it was an emergency backup weapon for the just-in-case moments. With a sigh, I picked up the standard usual, a magnum, and then got some clips for that, too. No sense only taking thirty rounds for the rifle and twelve for the pistol. If we needed them, we'd more than likely need several thousand rounds for each.

By the time I was done hemming and hawing and hesitating over what I really _wanted_ to take versus what I knew was _practical_ to take, Flint was done and out the door again. He's quick, efficient, and to the point. Actually fussed at me once for being less than the same.

Still, he was in a good mood and I wasn't about to complain about that. I also wanted to squeeze every last drop of it out of him until there was no more, too. The longer he spent being not mad at me, the longer I felt I could hang on to my sanity.

I trotted to make up lost time, and got caught up with Flint right as the main loading ramp hit the rock and quit moving. Outside looked huge. Flint started down the ramp without hesitation, looking around at all there was to see. Me?

Um.

No.

I was _not_ going out there… it was _faaaaar_ too open. It looked scary as hell just being so open. Never mind if I took a brisk walk down the mountain I'd be back in close quarters again. The forest didn't quite try to eat the mountains, but those trees looked massive and they were also pretty close. My hand swiped at the wall twice before I finally made contact, and once I did, I held on for dear life.

It was so _open_…

Finally, some six strides from the bottom of the ramp, Flint turned around and looked back at me. "What?"

I just shook my head.

I saw his shoulders drop. He'd sighed at me. Probably rolled his eyes a little, too. When he started walking back towards me, I knew full well what he was going to do, and I let go of the wall just to start backing up.

"No… no…. no…" My protests sounded weak even to me, but I didn't have enough time to get away before he'd gotten the gap closed again and had me by an elbow.

"Come on, already." He grumbled, turning back around and hauling me outside. I tugged back on him all the way down the ramp, unable for the most part to hear much beyond my own heart slamming in my ears. At the bottom, though, I could see more than just ahead. There was out left, and out right, and a little bit of behind me, as well, almost perfect surrounding peripheral. The sloop hid a small segment of it, but not nearly enough; I could see over it, and under it, and it was _all_ open.

I sunk against Flint's arm, and grabbed him tightly.

"Hey." He protested, digging at my thumb for a moment. "Ease up, it's not going to eat you."

"Yes it is!" I insisted. How he could stand to just casually walk out there, I have no idea. I was pretty sure I didn't ever want to become that jaded, either. But he got me dragged down the slope and down into the brushline, and once the forest closed around me, I felt a little less exposed… and a lot less panicked.

Starting to breathe again, I looked around. The crowded, close feeling of the trees helped to mitigate the fact that they were an easy fifty feet apart from one another, and the branchless space between the lower canopy and the tops of the brushy ferns below them. It had it's own brand of 'open', I guess, but that openness was filled with towering pillars of wood, breaking up the sense and offering points of grapple.

It was about as much open space as I could handle… it kept me on edge, but I wasn't frozen in terror, either. When he felt my vise like grip on him ease, Flint shoved me off of him, lowering my focus from the forest at large.

"No, Tori." Flint told me. "It really isn't."

I wanted to slap him.

He raised his left hand halfway, then hesitated, dropped it, and slung his right over his shoulder for the rifle. Once he had it in his hands, he turned away. "Come on, let's have a look around."

My attitude hesitated on me; wait… I felt certain I'd gotten the distinct impression that he really rather hated being in the forest. Was it a tactical preference, or just a generalized dislike of trees? I'd have to ask.

But that inability to decide which hand to use again… that part was starting to bug me. I took my own rifle off my back and hung onto it (more because I wanted something to do with my empty hands than because I wanted a gun in them) as I followed him.

I'm not trained to be observant like that, but the _first_ thing I noticed after going about a yard was that Flint was leaving tracks some two inches deep.

Wasn't that… unlikely? Why would the soil in a _forest_ be so fluffy and impressionable? I looked a little farther down, and lifted my own boot. Yes, I'm skinnier, yes I'm smaller in overall mass than Flint. But my Mjolnir weighs about as much as his. So we'd make tracks in soft soil that were more or less the same depth.

And sure enough, I was leaving obvious two-inchers, too. "Uh, Flint…?"

"What?" he sounded mildly annoyed, but when he got turned around and saw me looking down – with one foot in the air – he looked down, too.

I looked up. "Isn't this a bad thing?"

He looked back up, then, at me. "On the one hand, yes. On the other… more than yes."

"What does more than yes mean?" I asked, putting my lifted foot down.

"It means leaving tracks might be bad… but soil conditions in an environment like this _permitting_ tracks like those… is twice as bad. It means whatever lives here doesn't walk."

"Doesn't walk?" I asked, starting to walk towards him again. He let me take about five steps before turning back around and continuing on, himself.

"Yeah." I saw his head start to tip back, so I looked up, too, past him. There, some six or eight trees away, was a soot-blasted topless trunk, standing between two others that looked like they'd been de-barked by a fifty. "Doesn't walk."

"Oh, crap." I commented. "Flying? Or hovering? Or… something to that effect?"

"Yeah." Was all Flint said. I saw him stick his rifle to his shoulder and aim down the scope at the top of that broken tree, so I did the same. My range finder told me it was out of range… anything I fired at the trunk would pepper it some fifty or so feet below where my scope was pointed. "Looks like forty millimeter rounds. Non-explosive, at that."

I blinked… he'd been looking for bullet scarring? I focused again, and tried to look for the same. "I don't see any bullet holes, Flint."

I heard him turn halfway around – the leaf litter was enough to permit me that much – and look at me, so I dropped my rifle. "They don't make forty millimeter rounds that don't explode, Tori."

"What's a forty millimeter round look like?"

He made an OK hand sign and showed it to me. "They're about that big around."

I gave a soft whistle. "That's a big bullet."

"Yes, it is. Forty millimeters is usually a standard rifle-fired grenade, at that." He put his hand down, restoring it to the MA he was holding. "And even the Covenant's equivalent had explosive properties."

"Something that big around too big to not tempt ordinance?" I asked.

"Something like that." He turned back around, and looked back at the top of that docked trunk. "But whatever was shooting the top off of that tree was not shooting explosive rounds."

"What would it look like if he had been?"

Flint shrugged. "It wouldn't."

Ouch.

.

**ANUNA-02**

My… our… arm still hurt. It was a minor throbbing, but enough to keep our attention. I personally wasn't too bothered by it – there was nothing anylonger wrong with it, after all – but the Machine was still unsure about the whole of being a fleshy organic thing. Despite being a massively overpowered and overbuilt augment, it was still being tentative about the use and care of a more or less normal body.

As over built as we were, after all… we were still not a heavily armor plated robot, and we did not whir or thunk or bang. We still squished. And I, personally, was glad for that much. I did not like to think of what my poor, battered and abused mind might have thought if I had been thrust into a steel cage with contacts and hinges and hydraulic hosing.

That would have to be a tale for another day. In the meantime, we walked quickly, the Machine taking us in what looked to be a specified direction. Nothing looked different enough to me for navigation, but the Machine probably knew where its own point of origin was, given that it had stayed here and gotten to know the surroundings for a while and I, conversely, was a recent development.

Why I had been turned into a terrible mockery of a living being was still beyond me. And I pined constantly for my old body, my old life, and my old situation. Ah, sweet, maddening boredom! I would _savor_ that feeling, when next I felt it. In the meantime, I had to survive this chapter in my life, and somehow escape to tell of it.

How I could escape with the Machine governing my every move was still a pending problem, though. I missed my old companions, those who had come here with me and been slaughtered dishonorably like so much fodder for the eating. But they hadn't even been given that; not a one had been disturbed from their places of death. Not a one. Nary an insect had approached to offer their defaced bodies a second chance, at perhaps giving life to some other organism.

That was perhaps the greatest dishonor of all.

I could, for the most part, still see and move my eyes and sometimes even my head, so I roved both, looking around constantly. If my Machine counterpart had any appreciation for situational awareness, it did not show it. Personally I was not going to be slain yet again for a faulty Machine. We broke across and opening in the trees, and I yanked our head up to see the sky. The Machine was about to pull it back down to see where we were going again when we as a whole hesitated like that.

There was a con trail up there.

Had someone come? Or were the pieces of my transport beginning to break through the atmosphere and fall to the ground? I had not heard anything… but then, I had also not heard the Brutes appear, and they had come so far as to shoot me down! It was I who looked us down again, and took in the far treeline with renewed interest. I could hear the Machine thinking to itself, going over new data. But most of it was in machine coding and made little or no sense to me. I had learned to shut that out; it was just noise to me.

When it processed things in a living tongue, then I paid attention, and I absorbed each tidbit as if it were manna from the Gods. Any little piece – or perhaps all of them as a whole, assembled in such a way as eluded me now – might be my salvation from this Machine, and enable me to wrest control from it and then flee.

I certainly wanted to.

Standing in the clearing, I could hear the distant thunder of a far away thunderstorm, but the odds of it ever reaching here in any kind of time were fairly small. I just hoped it didn't rain something interesting, or the Sangheilian part of my new body might take exception to the exposure.

Especially since my idiot Machine counterpart had not yet seen fit to offer me anything to _wear_ and I had been traipsing around out in the trees _naked_. How humiliating. If I survived to see freedom again, I knew that I would not be the same Anuna 'Vadum as had ventured here.

Or perhaps the crash and the leap from the tree we had crashed into had knocked some sense into it… because we went to a freestanding knob of rock, clawed the mossy growth off of it, and lifted off what became clearly a covering cap to reveal some rather confusing and complicated looking controls. The interface recognized either my hand's make or something my hand did (I carefully made note of both) because with just a small finger-wiggle, we replaced the cap and dropped the moss back onto it.

Stepping forward past it, the ground yawned open and we descended a long ramp into the revealed depths. Barely had we gone a dozen feet than the opening began to close, and ahead I could already see the beginnings of familiar architecture. We stepped out onto the narrow walkway set into the middle of the bottom of the perfectly circular tube corridor, and strode meaningfully forth.

At least we were nolonger idly meandering, like last time. Idly I contemplated the last time I had been through Forerunner structures, but I wondered quietly. I had discovered that reminiscing would often get the attention of the Machine, and then it would learn something new about me. But comparing what I was seeing now with what I had previously experienced was often the only way I kept my sanity. If I could have thrust my sword through this Machine that controlled me, I would have done so a dozen times over, and a dozen hours ago to boot.

I was not pleased at my treatment.

We walked as if we knew where we were going, even if only one of us did. I followed along for the sheer fact that I could not go elsewhere, or stay behind. Finally, around the thousandth bend and even down one short ramp, we arrived at another curious chamber. Here the ceiling had not begun to cave under the invasion of the forest's root clusters, but there was one spot near the far corner where what looked like a massive tap had ruined the ceiling, the corner, and the floor. Microscopic hairs hung from the ugly thing, but whether they absorbed heat, moisture from the air, or just the light from the overheads, I was unsure.

It was most definitely a tap root, however… even if it did resemble a Gravemind's reaching limbs. The Machine recoiled from the tree root suddenly, as if shocked and appalled at my thought; evidently I had thought it just a little too loudly, and had sent all the worst nightmares of any decent self-respecting Machine right down its throat.

Haha.

Keeping clear of the root, now, we went to the far wall, which suddenly popped some doors that came out and then slid along the walls to the right and left. Behind it was a shiny new suit of dark gray armor.

Ah! Something to wear! And, better still, it looked _practical_ for my environment. For just a moment, I was pleased, and felt just a smidgen better about my situation than before. I started to reach for it when I remembered I did not have control… and then realized that I had in fact reached for it and then stopped. I looked at my arms, then leaned forward.

Happy to have control of my own body back, I took the armor down, and reassembled it upon my person. It felt custom fitted, as if it were designed with just exactly me in mind. Once I had the last of it on, I twisted my torso to one side, just reveling in the feel of having good armor on again.

Yes, I was still a helpless slave, but at least it was within my master's interests to not expend me meaninglessly upon the foes he doubtless had. There was no undersuit, but the armor locked into itself and would hinge. It was not, I found, powered, but it was also light, and aside from the minor restrictions of being hinged upon itself, fairly absolute.

Each piece had its own inner insulating, padding layer, so nothing chafed. But I was not given long to contemplate my new suit. Nor that I was naked beneath it – a strange feeling, to be sure. Rather, we were turned around and made to march back out the way we had come in, and while at first we seemed to retrace the exact path, at the last juncture we instead went in another direction.

It was then that I realized there was a little more to my clenched guts than apprehension, disgust and repugnance at my situation. A new fear etched in alongside all my others, as I came to wonder what exactly the Machine intended to do about fueling its new puppet.

We went through another irising door, and up to another processing unit, this one looking less like a hole in the wall that spontaneously emits custom built armor and a little more like an actual bit of machinery. There, we picked up one of the hoses – ugh, was I intended to feed like an Unggoy, from a nipple? – and it was unplugged from the port on the left and promptly crammed down our throat.

My personal gag reflex got it spat back out, and we coughed up the first bit of what looked like gray, lifeless sludge. Yuck! But the Machine stuck it back in anyway, and after it got me to show it how to swallow, it fed us on gray sludge.

Trapped in the back, I slowly turned green and became ill at the very thought. When we could swallow no more, the hose got plugged back into the port on the front of the unit, and we turned away. When I finally got let up, I found the flavor of whatever it was I'd just been fed nearly as repulsive as the look of it.

It was greasy, too… which, however repulsive it might have been, was actually not a bad thing. Greasy meant it had some protein quality, and I would not starve to death eating it. But that was entirely if it was a protein based grease, and not some vegetable oil.

Could have tasted better, though…

We finally finished our exit, and this time we made it back into the forest. Though honestly what we were really after was a mystery to me. Did the Machine want to leave the planet? Why had it not found some mechanized way to do so? Why was it using me? What cunning edge did I provide it? Aside, of course, from teaching it otherwise meaningless things like how to walk, blink, and swallow?

Or was it trying to force me to show it how to use instinct? I was not in the mood to be teaching such a nasty denizen anything, but alternatively, I did not particularly want to die if I could not find some way to take it out with me. I was a meaningless, honorless nomad at this point… but I was not without my mortal woes, and vengeance comes easily to those who have nothing to lose.

Maybe it would allow me to kill some of the invading Brutes before they were wiped out by the Machine's enemies?

.

**FLINT-093**

I admit that I was not happy leaving such an obvious trail. But there was nothing I could do about it, and I wasn't going to concern myself with figuring out how to float when I needed to be doing recon.

That was the mission, after all. Go forth and have a look. I'd taken the gun just because I always do, and because no recon is ever _just_ reconnaissance. The enemy usually spots you, and if they don't, you usually wind up being confronted by a situation that needs amending _now_, not after the twelfth of never whenever you manage to extract and get back to make a report that can then be debated and _finally_ sent back out with an actual combat unit.

But then, they don't often send Spartans on _just_ recon. They send Spartans when they suspect that the recon isn't going to _be_ just recon. Halfway smart, but why not call it what it is and just tell me outright that it'd be a combat drop?

Sure, there were no NC forces in the area, and I certainly hadn't seen anything resembling an armada come out with the planet and its sun. But all the same, my instinct had kept me alive thus far and I was not about to disregard it now. There was something here, something hostile, and something best left very much alone.

Why the Elites had come in might well be the same reason I had, all things considered. There's really very little you can do when a planet dumps you on your ass and then sucks you into its gravity well, all very suddenly. What had me really worried was that while I can well understand why I'd not be seeing any wild life… I wanted very badly to know why I wasn't hearing any _birds_. Or for that matter, bugs! There were no sign at all of anything other than plants, and of those, there were really only the kind that did not necessarily need hot-blooded creatures to facilitate their survival. Wind will pollinate as easily as a bug will, after all, but it has to be a certain kind of pollen for that to do any good for the plants in question.

So there was that issue.

Tori was being quiet, for which I was thankful, but the deeper into the woods we walked the more I wanted to just cut and run for it, go back to the sloop and take a stab at escaping. There's just no self respecting planet gonna drop into slipspace, after all. And certainly not back out again. That there was something here needed no verification. The part where it needed to be left very much alone, however… that part needed some serious enforcing.

And here I was, being a good little soldier, and heading in to poke it with a stick anyway. To say I felt rather like an idiot was an understatement. I hadn't lived this long just to go and get myself killed doing something _dumb_.

We had walked for nearly three hours before I found the first opening, but I stopped at the treeline and looked in from around the edge of a fern. The clearing looked unnatural, but it was also overgrown with moss and a strange grass. Why weren't there tree sprouts there? I could see no freshly dead tree trunks in the area, so a lack of time for them to get sprouted good was missing. There had been time. Someone was keeping the clearing groomed of trees.

But there was no one there… not even any floaty things.

Tori stepped up to the side of the next tree over, and looked in, too. She looked no less edgy than I felt, which made me feel better about being so edgy. I wasn't being paranoid if she was feeling it, too. But then, a forest lacking in animals and bugs would make even the most inobservant of people feel edgy. It was just _wrong_. Perhaps they'd never figure out what was missing or why, but the feeling would remain. Creepy would be a good word for it.

There is no excuse for such an unnatural silence as this place possessed.

"What do you see?" Tori asked me.

"Same as what you see." I told her. "Nothing."

"This is wrong." She mentioned. "There ought to be bugs, at least. _Something_."

I saw her picking at the scratches in the metal of her MA, and wondered why she hadn't machined it smooth before applying new bluing. Oh well, she was strange sometimes. Looking back out at the clearing, I wondered why it was clear. What would cause an interest in keeping it open? If I knew why, then I might be able to deduce who was doing it… if in fact the why did not prove to be hopelessly alien.

"Do we go in?" She asked.

"No." I turned from the fern and began to head along the treeline, supposing we would circumvent the clearing entirely and see what was beyond it. The opening wasn't that big – oh, about fifty meters by twenty-eight meters. Oblong, yes. Which was what had made me wonder if it hadn't been a downed tree at first. It certainly wasn't now, though. But it would be easy and simple to go around, and we'd never come out into the open where whatever had kept the place tended and open would be able to see us.

I was not in the mood to be seen just yet. That was the whole point of recon, after all. See without being seen. And I hadn't seen anything useful. Seen plenty that was creepy as hell. Seen plenty that looked very wrong, very out of place. But nothing _useful_. So I had to go deeper, risk more. Heighten my danger levels a little more.

Joy of joys.

To suicide missions like moths to flame, they say.

Well, a half-mile from the first one, we found another. But this one had some interesting freestanding architecture on it. It looked a lot like a classical city ruin from the Renaissance age, but it was, again, too small to be a city. Tori stopped about two trees back, seeming to look at it with that critical eye she sometimes has for very bad things. If her instinct is any better than mine, though… that would be another tidbit that just isn't fair.

But I went to the last tree, and since there was no particular fern to stand in and be hidden by, I crouched down next to the trunk and looked around it at the clearing. There _used_ to be habitation here. But was there still? And if so, what kind? Nothing organic… people need food, and food comes with feet. Feet that pack down things like the hopelessly fluffy soil we'd left tracks all through.

Ever seen what your hamburger comes from? It's got hooves, doesn't it? Exactly.

I brought up my MA and was looking at the far end of the (yes, this one was oblong, too) clearing when I heard Tori make a noise that was not a word. I jerked the gun down and looked her direction, but she was gone.

"… Tori?"

A buzzing whine from the clearing got my attention away from behind me, though, and as soon as I saw it I knew I'd been right. _Things that fly_. It looked like a six-foot-wide disk with a fat middle and razor edges, but it had what resembled rotary machine guns mounted on the bottom on either side. Both were, sadly, pointed right at me.

"Oh, crap!"

I darted out of the way right in time to miss being hit by the first hail, but to where I went I found another just like it. This one had horrid looking battle scoring all over its armored hide, so I didn't bother shooting at it. What I had said to Tori earlier came back to me. Firing even non-explosive thirty-millimeter rounds at something like me would tear me all to bits.

And they had been fired at _that thing_ and it was still operating. More rounds stitched the ground and the trees in my wake, but I still didn't see Tori anywhere. "Tori!" She'd vanished before the shooting started, so I felt confident she was still alive somewhere, but where remained to be seen.

I hooked a hard right around a really big tree, earning just a moment of respite when the thing deflected all the ammunition aimed at me. Up ahead, I saw another… different model… but it was the same thing. Quiet as a whisper the blindingly bright lances popped down and sizzled the ferns around me, the aim only correcting above me when one of the rotary cannon kind got within sight of it.

Shit, they were fighting each other, too! "_TORI!_" I hooked back left and made for the next tree up.

"Here!" She finally cried. "What the hell is going on? What are those things?"

"Where are you?" I made the next tree up – damn, I was only five trees from the clearing. I was going _slow_ trying to evade those drones – and discovered I was nearly face to face with yet another one. It was the funny looking kind with the quiet heat lasers on it, but it was low enough that I was able to reach up with the butt of my MA and smack it right out of the air. When it spiraled into a tree and hit the dirt, I made a point to pounce on it, smashing it flat under a half-ton of Mjolnir boot.

"Where do I go? They're everywhere!" Tori complained. Out to my left I could hear the drones duking it out, the loud rattle of rotary cannons and the protesting hiss of vegetation being burned while wet. The same was going on behind me. So, I went left. I got about a dozen yards and found Tori's blip on my motion tracker finally, so I steered around the trees looking to get over to where she was.

She evidently saw my blip on hers, too, because she turned and met me halfway.

"Back to the sloop – _now_!" I caught her and spun her out of the way of another silent laser, then shoved her off in the correct direction. She's got no sense for it, so I usually have to point, but there was no time for that now. It was move or die… and I had no intention of getting hammered to mulch by a hovering droid.

Tori ran… boy did she run. I was going full tilt but she still got out ahead of me, and stayed there, very slowly growing the gap between us. Even having to evade and zig-zag around the trees didn't slow her up much, but when she got off course I made up some distance before she got back around and going the right direction.

Finally, when she was in sight but outside of tracker range, she spun on a heel and dumped to a knee in the dirt, shouldered her rifle and started pegging at the drones chasing me. I heard one of them explode in the air, and another lose power and dump into the dirt, but I kept going. If I tried to shoot, too, I'd waste time and get swarmed. The annoying buzzing whine that the big ones emitted had overlayed the entire forest, and the massive wave of pursuing drones – even despite their fighting each other, too – had filled up the bottom half of my motion tracker.

That kind of enemy action is _always_ a bad thing. Somewhat reminiscent of Flood forms, swarming up the hill to get me. I remembered that hill, too… it had let John get through, get after Truth in a timely manner and kill the retard, but… I had still gotten swarmed and overrun.

And shot in the back with an SPNKr.

I hooked around the next to last tree between myself and Tori, and before she came back within sight she was up and running again, throwing magazines back and forth to reload her rifle. I saw a laser stitch a fern just inches to my left, so I went first right and then cut back hard left again in time to miss getting cut down by compensating fire. I was not about to be herded anywhere.

We'd left most of the buzzing whine behind, but the laser-firing kind were quiet. Telling where they were was harder, as I had to constantly glance at the HUD and take my footpath on faith while I was at it. I can do it… but going at a dead run while doing it will really test the ability. Somehow I managed to make it okay until Tori hit a clearing we hadn't found before and drew up short of going into it.

"Don't worry about it, Tori, just go!" I told her. She was far enough out ahead that it wouldn't matter… it was _me_ who was going to have problems with that clearing. But again, I really didn't have time to be making circles to get around it, either. She backed up a step and launched back into her run, barely ahead of me anymore. Right behind her, I plunged out of the treeline in time to see the ground in the middle of the clearing had a split in it.

Forgive me for being distracted at the time, but it did take me a moment to realize that it wasn't any casual split in the ground. It was some twelve feet wide when Tori met it, but at a dead run her foot prints are some six feet apart… she coiled and jumped, and cleared the opening cleanly. She didn't even have to tuck and roll to make the far side. She just hit on her leading foot and kept going.

When I made the same breach, I struck the far side a little shy, but before I could feel affronted that she was a much better jumper than me, I felt it move. My focus dropped, and I looked at what I was holding onto, forgetting for a moment that my feet were dangling over empty air and that there were killer droids in the trees behind me.

"… what the hell…?"

The slit in the ground was getting steadily _wider_… and a glance over my shoulder told me it was now easily thirty feet wide and getting bigger. Just as I began to pull upwards and try to get out of the hole – it didn't look particularly shallow, let's just put it that way – I realized that right directly in front of where I was sliding to was this building roll of soil, moss and flowers. And behind that was one of the freestanding pillars.

I got a knee over the lip, got pushed into that roll and scraped right back off into the hole.

"Crap!!"

"Flint!"

I made splashdown on my back, so the splash was pretty spectacular. But since I was looking up, I did note that the pursuing droids were not going overhead. Nor were they coming down to get me. Why? Had we been herded anyway, and Tori just fast enough to get through before the drop was wide enough to catch her?

The comn kicked on, compensating the distance between us. "_Flint! Where are you? They've stopped at the treeline…_"

"Uh… I'm in water." I said, raising my hands to look at them as I sank casually through the liquid heading for the bottom. "Murky, kinda." It was hard as hell to see either of them… there was this black, soupy, grainy shit flowing past my arms and face and I couldn't see through it very well.

"_The droids don't look like they're willing to come into the clearing. I'm coming back,_" Tori said. "_Where did you nigzhbbbb?_" The sentence ended in a harsh, loud buzz right into my ear, making me growl in protest… but I knew what that mangled word and then the buzz combined meant.

My comn was dead. Like… been smashed under a sledge, dead.

That's about when I finally saw the first lines of decay forming across my visor. A heartbeat later, the HUD went black, leaving me only ambient light to see what was happening to my armor.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be shitting me."

.

**TORI-138**

I had gotten stopped, a shoulder tucked into the backside of a tree, and was looking around it at the line of hesitant robots in the other treeline. "The droids don't look like they're willing to come into the clearing. I'm coming back," I told Flint. "Where did you get to?" I couldn't see him… but I did recall having to jump a crack in the ground that looked rather suspiciously straight-sided. If he hadn't seen it in time to compensate, he'd probably dropped right into it. Which might be where the 'I'm in water' comment had come from.

And there was, from my current point of view, this carpet-roll of the thin soil and moss layer that had been over where that opening now was.

It looked a lot wider than when I'd leapt it… but I didn't really want to go out there and risk getting fired on by being in the open. Just because they'd quit flying after us did not mean they wouldn't fire on us still, if given the chance. On that note… the 'us' part had seemed to disappear on me, too. Where, exactly, was Flint?

He'd seemed mildly peeved, but otherwise sounded okay. But then again, he hadn't answered my last question. One by one the drones slowly backed away and went somewhere else, so when there was only one left, I ventured out. Quickly I made for the first freestanding arch, and tucked next to it, keeping a close eye on that retreating line of droids. Had they been trying to herd us here, in hopes that what had happened to Flint would happen to me, too?

We'd been moving fast. Too fast for them to readily keep up. Flint was in back, sure, but even he'd been some good distance out ahead of the droids themselves, forcing them to fire down narrow lines to try to hit either of us. So trying to herd us would have been impossible. We could have gone in any direction we wanted… case in point, this was _not_ the direction we'd used to get to where we set those droids off.

When the last one looked gone, I ventured out into the open, and hesitated within reach of returning to my cover. When nothing happened, I straightened, and sprinted the last few meters to the carpet roll of moss and dirt.

Arriving, I sucked in a fast breath and screamed, _"FUCK!"_

There were broad metal doors over the hole, sealing it quite effectively. "Flint!" The world, he'd said, had come out of slipspace. I didn't really believe it was a real planet, sun or not, just that whoever had built it couldn't keep its exterior from behaving like one. Gather some space dust, get a soil layer. Gather some extraneous gasses, build an atmosphere. The thing was big enough to generate its own magnetic field, trapping all of the above and turning it into something of a broken ecosystem. Case in point… no bugs. No nothing at all, other than the trees.

So the odds of him being able to hear me – the odds of a radio signal getting through whatever in hell those doors were made out of – were abysmal. He hadn't answered me because he couldn't hear me anymore, and even if he was screaming at the top of his lungs, I'd never hear him either.

_I'm in water_.

So whatever was down there that had tried to capture him was flooded with groundwater. Natural enough, I guess. It certainly looked old enough to have rusted through – or better, been punched through by the tree's roots – and gotten some leaks in it. But they were not going to let me talk to Flint, that was obvious. I sent a Mjolnir-clad foot at the nearest freestanding pillar in anger, and cursed again.

"Fucking piece of ancient rusted out _shit_!" Yes, I was pretty good at cussing. I was even pretty good at cursing – the art of which, I'd been told, was nearly lost. Cussing is where you use words you don't want children to hear. Cursing, on the other hand, is where you use words children are actually _taught_ to say, but you don't use them nicely.

I was justifiably (I thought) pissed off, because now I, the duly appointed non-combatant, was all by myself in one of the biggest combat zones known to Man. Worse still, my one and only source of combat-effective know-how had just been swallowed up by what could easily be a bit of _broken_ enemy machinery.

Which meant getting him back out of it would be an interesting piece of work, for sure. I kicked the pillar a second time, and it buckled over and broke off, dropping onto its side in the disturbed mossy carpet. I watched that for a moment, but when it was over, I decided to go back to the sloop, and get some ordinance to peel open Flint's new cage. I certainly didn't have any plastic _on_ me… and even though he hadn't really shown me more than a cursory 'you don't do this' on the stuff, I figured I needed it more than I didn't need to be messing with it.

I hit the treeline and instantly one of the saucers was upon me, belting out ammunition (_this big… holding out an OK hand sign_) at me as it came. I yelped and leapt clear of the first hundred rounds, but it pelted me with the overcompensation of trying to follow my retreat and my shielding broke.

I scrambled back to my feet and ran for it, now well aware of why Flint hadn't even _tried_ to put up a fight. He knew his munitions, apparently, and his lack of explaining probably never even occurred to him. It just _was_, and the idea that I didn't know any of that likely never crossed his combat-addled mind. Don't get me wrong… if I need to know something, Flint'd tell me all I never wanted to know about it. I will never reiterate the rifle-how-to he gave me for that reason. But there are some things he forgets that I don't know anything about, and he assumes I know those things.

Most of the time (cue, most) it's not that big a deal, and it doesn't hurt that much. But I'd shot plenty of these bastards out of the air already and until they shot me back, I hadn't understood Flint's initial evasion tactic fully. Now that I did, I was all for keeping my hide intact… even _Mjolnir_ isn't going to stop a thirty-millimeter whatchamacallit. I should have been dead… had I been wearing a Marine's standard issue get-up, I would have been.

Would have been _quite_ dead, and perhaps in a few dozen pieces for my trouble. I thanked the god of shielding as I ran, aware I'd lost my direction almost as soon as I'd been assaulted. I figured out just _how_ lost I was when I circled the tree I'd ducked around and nailed the saucer droid with some MA adoration.

The clearing where I'd lost Flint was nowhere in sight. And… I could not, for the life of me, figure out which direction to go to get back to the sloop. I looked for tracks in the soft dirt, but the drone had erupted all over my trail and even once I found a boot print, I discovered it was pointing the same way I'd gone to find the damn thing.

Not helpful. I wanted to _retrace_ my steps, not follow myself forward! Still, trying to find tracks that are in the dirt when everything is overgrown with funny looking ferns _and _keep from getting shot at all at once is not an easy task. I was about to head for the disturbed wake in the fern's leaves when I saw one of the heat-laser type zooming in towards me, and it was leaving just such a wake in its path.

Damn, there went that idea. I shot the teardrop-shaped drone down and ran from its friends, figuring a generalized direction towards the mountains would get me into at least a sightline of the sloop, and then I'd be alright.

About fifteen minutes later (and one of the trees got brought down atop me in that time) it occurred to me that while finding the sloop might be a chore, once I'd found it, getting back to wherever in hell I'd lost Flint would be even harder. The damnable droids aside! I hoped he hadn't lost his gun when he fell… he'd need the thing if the inside of that flooded cavern was anything like the surface of this world.

Gah.

Escaping a collapsing monster of a tree that is longer than my sloop helped to swat some of the pursuing droids out of the sky, but after the first saucer all I saw were the teardrop type with the little bitty arms that they shot from. I wondered if they had territories… or if their presence was a mixed up jumble, and they moved around like clouds of bees. Charging headlong through the ferns and trying to keep them from getting across my visor kept me occupied for a while, until I felt I couldn't run anymore. I never saw a single rock, never saw the mountains… but I did charge headlong across three of the odd clearings. One was almost perfectly circular, though, rather than oblong.

The droids always went around them, never through, for some reason I never could figure. But when I found one where the dirt had been disturbed already, I half wondered if I'd come full circle. I did not see a carpet roll, though. Just a bunch of… wait… ah hell… those things patterned across the ground were _Elite tracks_.

Bunch of idiot splitlips had been through here, and now I was about to run through the same old gauntlet. Probably find what they found, too. I charged straight across the clearing, and punched into the woods on the far side only to trip up on something soft and meaty and fall kersplat on my face.

"Yaagh!"

I jerked to my knees in haste, but I did look back to see what I'd tripped over… the sight made me hesitate. It was an Elite… with about a dozen neat little holes burned into him. I lurched away, horrified and disgusted at once. Those droids really _were_ trying to kill me! I turned and ran again, aware I had only a few more seconds before the droids coming after me got caught up. Out ahead, though, I heard a heartening sound.

Plasma rifle fire.

That was a sweet, sweet sound indeed. Surely if I could reconnoiter with some Elites, we could make some kind of stand and clear a path back to the sloop… or hell, I'd borrow some of _their_ ordinance. Surely they could help me navigate back the way I'd come, and help me get Flint out of that hole.

Elites liked Flint. Right? They were his friends. He'd told me some of their names. Maybe if I told them his, they'd help me out. Especially since what I wanted to do was go and _rescue_ the guy. All my scheming went up in shrapnel and fire when I plunged into the next clearing, though; it wasn't Elites. These were _Brutes_.

Actually… they looked kinda harried, too. I kept running, even though several saw me coming and spared me some ammunition. The plasma slapped harmlessly across my shielding, the rounds that struck me being insufficient to break through and hit my armor. When they finally saw what I was leading… or running away from, actually… it altered their aim.

One even waved me to cover. For a fraction of a second, I actually believed him… but only for a fraction. I'd aimed for him, though, and he was shooting past my head again when I zipped right past and kept on going. If I could shave off my pursuing party by running through the middle of a pack of Brutes, all the merrier. And if I could steal something explosive while I was at it… I looked around, but they didn't have much at all in the way of spare equipment.

By the tracks in the dirt, it actually looked like they'd run here in the same manner that I had, seeking cover to shoot from. And since the droids absolutely refused to enter any opening in the woods, it made the broken ruins an ideal place to take cover. Except.

During my momentary hesitation to look at what the Brutes had brought, one turned and tossed me a plasma rifle and commanded, "Shoot!"

I fumbled the rifle past my own, but even though I dropped it, I did actually turn back and send some MA ammunition downrange. My aim reset when my left foot rose suddenly, though, and I staggered backwards before dumping onto my ass. From between my knees I saw the thing come up out of the ground, wearing a moss hat, sorting itself on the underside as it rose.

I screamed at it – yet another model of droid – and stuck the MA into its face and fired off half my magazine. Several of my rounds actually bounced and zipped off my own shielding, but eventually the hammering broke its armor and I put it down. Seeing me do that, though, the Brutes began to howl like a pack of rabid dogs. Their cover was faulty… and more of the same were coming up out of the ground through what turned out to be access chutes all over the place.

I got up, swiped the plasma rifle, and ran for it.

Seeing I wasn't going to help them hold out any, a couple of them decided to shoot at me again, so I didn't feel too bad about abandoning them. I got into the trees again and hooked a hard right, intending to go back around behind the assault line where I'd come in. I was so high on adrenalin I didn't know up from down anymore, but I did know my legs hurt rather badly. I don't know how Flint does it… practice, maybe. But I ached, and even though I was high as a kite I still wanted to stop, and take the time to catch my breath.

Coming around the curve of the Brute's standing point, though, I heard something else curious, and it made me peel away from my initial destination. I didn't need to get that close to the droids' flanks anyway, but the noise sounded a lot like another MA firing off.

"Flint? Is that you?" I asked, hoping he was still on the same channel as before. "Flint! Please respond!" I knew I was begging for it to be so… if I didn't have to dig him out of the ground, I would be massively relieved… better yet, if he'd found a way out and had gotten to and through it without being killed.

But all I did was break through another treeline, and stumble to a stop in another clearing. This one had no freestanding anything in it, it was just plain flat. I looked around once, then picked a direction at random and went. I was down to a sprinting trot, though, rather unwilling to continue to run flat out. I was shaking, and I knew if I didn't aim on the fly then I'd never hit anything ever again.

"Flint, please, tell me you're out there." I came around the gajillionth identical tree that looked like all the blasted rest of them and found something different – it was an Elite! Yay! But he was running from something, so I stuck my MA to my shoulder and braced against the tree I'd come around.

He turned, _then_ spotted me, and came my direction. He didn't have a gun on him, for some reason, but the teardrop chasing his ass certainly did. I shot it to bits and then tossed the plasma rifle I'd swiped to the guy. He caught it, fumbled it for a second, then got it right.

I waited for more, but there was only one droid for the moment, so I chinned on the external comn and turned to see my new buddy. "Are there more of you?"


	5. Sacrificial Coding

**5: Sacrificial Coding**

ANUNA-01

I could have shot it to bits, but the Machine had not given me anything to shoot with. I could have caught it in my hands and torn it apart, but the Machine was in control, and in the spirit of keeping its new toy alive, it chose to have us flee.

I was angry.

We ran, our augmented muscles pounding us along for what felt like hours, darting hither and yon and ducking back and forth to keep the aim of the finned droid from ever hitting us. I could hear combat happening all over, but I had yet to see a Brute. Or anything but droids, for that matter. Flying, hovering, armor plated, shooting droids, all of whom worked for some other intelligence. Why the Machine controlling me did not have an army of its own I do not know or understand.

But oh well.

Finally, the sounds of battle drawing nearer, our… shall I be pompous and call it an escort? In any case, the droid following us did not appear to be capable of going any faster. So it stayed in the back, pursuing, but not catching. Shooting, but not hitting. At times the Machine would guide us too straight and then the quiet lasers would stitch the greenery at our flanks.

I was quite surprised, then, when I heard the familiar rattle of a Human weapon, right on top of me. The Machine turned us, and then I got to see who it was. For the briefest of instances I thought it was 'Zelisee, come to rescue me from this nightmare… but the Human's features came to me quickly and I knew this to be untrue.

For one thing… 'Zelis is neither that shape nor that slender. He was definitely one of the Demon creed, however, as it was my understanding that that kind of Human-make armor cannot be worn by anything less. His aim was true, and our droid escort crashed to the forest floor in flaming pieces. I convinced the Machine to quit running, and we drew up and turned around, ready to pounce and attack.

_No!_

Our hands came up, legs bracing…

_Friend!_

We were just a hair's breadth from getting the unsuspecting Human by the throat…

_Bloodsworn!_

… huh?

Whew! I'd confused it, and the confusion granted me enough time and leverage to drop our arms and straighten our stance, right as the Human turned around, the rifle's aim dropping. On one hip, there was a standard, normal looking Human sidearm, but on the other was a New Covenant style DER. I wanted it… and suddenly it was tossed at me, so the Machine caught it, querying me for its use and function.

I told it to hold it at our side, and that was how it was used.

So the Machine did so.

Stupid machines…

Then the Human made noises at us, noises the Machine had never before heard and could not begin to understand or decrypt… I got the impression that the fumbling calculations it was making were in fact a groping realization that it didn't even know what a vocal language _was_.

Finally, at a loss, it asked me. I demanded control. Remarkably enough, I got it, and was given a memory copy of what had been said. Oh! Yes… of course.

"Are there more of you?"

I shook our head. "No… we are alone." Eegh! My voice sounded _funny_! Like I had strangled on a smooth marble for a while, before coughing it up.

The Human hesitated, as if wary of my delayed reply, then said, "Understood…" Hearing the Human speak firsthand told me _volumes_ more than getting the dead, tone-flat copy the Machine had handed me. I took a sideways step away from her, a little startled that there was a _female_ Demon out and about. Females were… shall we say… twitchy? They do not make good warriors. Some can, I concede, but… most do not possess the cool needed to go under heavy fire and come out again still sane.

This one sounded like a gods-be-damned robot. Very professional, very '_I've been at this for a long time_'. Very Human of her, actually. We had found their females dotted through the ranks of their warriors all through the Thirty Years War, and even beyond, after the Schism was over.

She settled her rifle, and rolled a shoulder, seeming to study me. "There's Brutes in the clearing behind me and a couple of cruisers on their way. How long have you been out here?"

Honestly? I really do not know… "Brutes?" Really? Could I go and kill some? Take out some of my pent-up seething at my captor?

"Yeah, Brutes." I mentally reiterated that line with some sarcasm attached. "Which direction did you come from?"

I turned, and pointed.

"That's not helpful, you blithering splitlip. I need _north_, and _south_. Which _direction_?"

_Ooohhh_, that word irked me greatly! The Machine thought an ally was quite novel indeed, though, now that it was finally convinced it had found one. Why she was an ally on first meet was a mystery to it, but it didn't allow me to punch her in the visor for calling me that. Oh, how I so dearly wanted to, though! For shame… and to think… 'Zelis would never have called me that.

He had more honor than many of his race, apparently.

"Hello? I lost Flint and I don't have time to sit around waiting for your slow brain to come up with an answer." She was an irritable thing.

But _Flint_ rang a bell. A big damn bell. Wait… was not that 'Zelisee's other name? "Another Demon, like you?" It had been a number of years, and I wanted confirmation.

"Yeah, whatever." She waved a hand at me. "But I lost him, and I need something to blow the doors open so I can get him out. I can't get a radio signal through so I'd like to _hurry_."

"Where?" Oh, yes… how like him to go and get himself stuck. It was very likely this other Demon she'd called Flint, whose name rang a bell, was the same Demon I had known in the past. So, I made sure the Machine understood the severity of the situation. I was very much wanting to go and find this other Demon, if for no other reason than to find out if he was 'Zelisee… and if he'd come to save me like I'd imagined he had a moment ago.

"I… have a bad sense of direction." The female admitted, her shoulders dropping. "And those damn droids have been running me in hopeless circles all damn day."

My, my! She was well and truly justified, I now understood, in being so very irritable. I could empathize with the running from the droids thing. Very much so. I had lost Rano and Igan to those damnable machines. "Is there nothing at all to lead you back?"

"Well…" She looked past me, then around a little, before looking back at me again. "I kicked one of the pillars over?"

The Machine spun to life, generating a strange buzzing feeling in the back of my brains, calculating and comparing. Then I got a mental picture of the site… and I knew that whoever the Demon had been… he was in a lot of trouble. The Machine claimed that that was another of the reservoirs that I had dropped into. Not only was he now without equipment of _any_ kind, he was likely going through the same process I had been through. And soon enough he'd probably be shot full of whatever it was that had turned _me_ into this monstrosity, and be marched out again under the control of a Machine not unlike mine.

I sighed. "I know where that is… but I do not know how to get it open." The Machine knew where to take us, so we went in that direction. I let it walk for me, because I wanted to curl up in the back for a while and mull over the terrible quality of my day thus far.

Even poor 'Zelis had gotten himself stripped and implanted.

.

FLINT-093

Well… that was interesting. I'd sunk to the bottom (being in a half-ton of armor will do that) at first, but then with the armor in question dissolving around me, I'd made a point to be quick about finding an edge and getting out of the… whatever it was. Acid, I dunno.

I made the discovery that it was not, in fact, an acid before I ever found the edge, but I made it up onto an arch of root some big around as I was, and got sat down on it before all the Mjolnir was gone. My guns were mush, as was the ammunition I'd packed to go with. I was annoyed, but more so that whatever it was was still eating away everything I had on me.

Even my skinsuit.

Shortly I was a little wet behind the ears but otherwise… um… naked. That part proved a little disconcerting. Now what do I do with myself? Even if I got back out, I'd be toast as soon as a droid happened along. The Mjolnir being an accelerator suit made me fast enough to evade them. Without it, I'd only be fast enough to be tired when I died horribly.

Not in the plans.

So I sat on the root and palmed my chin and wondered what to do with myself for a while as I stared at the softly rippling liquid. I had wondered if Tori had made it back to the sloop, what the liquid was, and if there was a way out of the cavern it was contained in all before anything changed. And I was wondering fairly slowly.

I raised my head off my hand to watch with mild interest as the stuff dropped in level, until finally I spotted several spinning whirlpools where it was consolidating and going down. Having my armor mixed into it had made it murky as hell, but once it was gone I noted the floor wasn't what I'd thought it might be. I hopped down from the root and paddled noisily across the wet surface over to the nearest large, circular opening, and looked down.

There was a fairly short drop to a pretty sudden stop at the bottom. But my trained eyes (even in the gloom) knew a clear tube when they saw one. They were observation tanks… and they looked about good enough to hold something a little bigger than me, with some minor elbowroom to spare.

Maybe that was what this was… a catch-all meant to collect samples of living organisms sans anything that might fool whoever was looking in into thinking the organisms in question had funny shapes.

Hence the strange liquid that had dissolved my Mjolnir for me but hadn't so much as given _me_ a rash. I walked around to each of the chutes, but I paused when I saw one of them was broken. And there was a massive puddle of leaked liquid all over the floor down below the broken chamber. Huh! Novel. I dropped to a knee, took the lip of the hole in hand, and slid down to the bottom.

It wasn't as broken as it'd looked… but then, above me, the lid to my chamber slid shut. Okay, so there really wasn't much I could do up there anyway. So I braced against the backside of the tube I was in and punched out the fragments until the hole was big enough for me to step out through. I winced when my foot found a shard, but after pausing to pull the thing out of my foot again, I was more careful about where I stepped.

Little too used to stepping wherever the hell I damn well pleased, I guess. (probably has something to do with the Mjolnir) Around me was a more or less empty room, unsurprisingly circular, but the door to out was standing open. If in fact the doorway had had a door in it once.

I got out of the mess of shattered… eh, I guess it was glass of _some_ kind… and walked that way, contemplating the sore spot on the bottom of my wounded foot with each step. It didn't really hurt that much, as the fragment I'd stood on had been a small one, and I'd got it yanked out again too soon for it to do much wiggling around. Still, I was leaving wet red oval-shaped prints on the floor behind me.

Outside was a corridor that linked to all the other observation rooms, and I found the tubes that led to the drowning chamber above me in each. None had anything in them. Shrugging, I turned down the other way, and walked until I found myself in another, broader chamber. There were a collection of three tightly connected metal pillars in the center of the room, and strange, alien looking equipment all along both walls, stretching all the way around the room. It had corners, though… it wasn't another circle.

Stepping into that, though, got some attention. The forward pillar suddenly wrinkled up and got ribbing all up it, then it retracted like an accordion sheath. The open shunt it revealed was empty for a moment, but a gust of stale air came out before what, for all intents and purposes, looked like a mangled up Forerunner Monitor dropped out.

But this one seemed to stand on the odd little electrical arcs that it was throwing everywhere, rather than floating freely like the Monitors do. It was still a ball-shaped thing, though with a more complete external frame, and with a diamond-shaped port in the front where the… was it an eye?… peeked out.

First it buzzed at me and twitched to the side. Then it made a very obvious hiccup sound. Sounded like it ought to have come out of Tori, not the funny little droid thing.

"Hi, there." I told it.

"Hi, there." It repeated, in a tinny little voice that sounded very badly mechanized. If I got rusty and corroded, and somehow higher pitched, I would have sounded just like it.

I frowned at it, suspecting it was merely parroting me. "And what do you do?"

I was pleasantly surprised to find my suspicion mislaid; "I am the mmmmm-monitor of this station."

Oh, wonderful. A monitor, yes. And one with a stutter! "Okay, what's this station do?"

"Why, we collect and store sam-mmm-mmples here!"

So it was the M's that gave him trouble. Okay… "Samples of what?"

"Everything!" The sphere did a little up-down nod on its little stabbing electric arcs. I hoped it didn't try to get too close to me with those things… they didn't look terribly lethal but I thought they'd burn like shit if one got me. "Organic, that is…"

And I didn't even have a t-shirt on to save me if it tried. "I suppose I found your collection tank." I looked around one more time, then back at the monitor. Then I wondered why it hadn't called security on me yet. "So… I'm a little lost. Is there a crew quarter anywhere in this… station?"

"Certainly, but it hasn't been used or opened in nearly fifty thousand mmmm-mmillennia."

Okay, okay… the stutter was starting to bother me a little. But I wasn't going to complain outright. "And when was the last time _you_ got any maintenance?"

The thing rattled off a string of numbers… sounded vaguely like a date. I shook my head.

"Where's the crew quarter?"

"If I mmm-might be so bold as to ask," The monitor countered, "What business would one such as yourself have in standard access crew housing?"

I crossed my arms, aware I'd hit some kind of firewall. I was an intruder, technically, and was probably relying on this bug being seriously rampant just to not get fried off my bones for getting in. "I wanted some equipment…" shirt, some britches… maybe a pair of boots, and a gun?

It didn't even let me finish. "All field-qualified combat engineers are requisitioned to the forward and upper levels. Accom-mmm-modations for all their personnel and equipm-mm-ment needs are mmm-met in the front bay area. Resting quarters are in the forward drop calipers." It quirked off to one side, in a half-rolling motion, and hung that way. "You are the replacem-mm-ment sent for Hazard one-three-seven Owen-I S-3?"

"Uh…"

"You are very late. But expected. Equipm-mm-ment was set aside in anticipation of your arrival. Please follow mmm-me."

The thing was buggy as hell if it thought I was some hazard-numero-whatchimawhatever. But I was willing to play ball if it meant I got something to wear. Something armor plated, preferably. And got shown the door. Tori was likely tearing herself to bits trying to figure out what happened… that or was going to go and get something explosive and try peeling the doors I'd dropped through open.

Fool thing… she didn't know how to do that. At least not properly. I made a mental note to give her a field run on ordinance when I got back up topside.

The monitor-thing spun around on a central axis, and zapping the floor every six inches along the way, went merrily around the central pillars where it had dropped in and headed for the far doorway. Which, I noted, also did not have closure. The floor felt very cold, and a little smooth, but it was nice on my little puncture wound, so I didn't complain, even if it was making my toes go numb. On that note, the _air_ in here was a little on the chill side. But then, it was also stale as hell and probably hadn't been recycled, vented, replaced, or even breathed in about as much time as the monitor had mentioned.

Couple of thousand millennia.

Which, come to think of it, is a _long_ damn time to wait for a replacement to ship in. Absently I wondered what had happened to the dude who needed replacing, and what in turn had happened to the dude meant to replace him. And what in all hells Hazard meant… and what the dudes in question did for a living.

Forward and upper suggested some kind of specialty… was it the task force? Security detail? Was it a science lab, embedded in the ground under a fortress that was meant to keep it safe? I didn't really want to ask, considering such questions might clue it in to the fact that I really wasn't who it thought I was. I was taken down the corridor only a short way, then diverted into what looked like a side-passage shortcut. It proved to be one of the long, creepy hallways lined on both sides with those same observation tubes. These, however, were in maintenance mode and each had an occupant.

One looked a little like a deer. All the rest more resembled strange, alien, weird something or other type creatures, but aside from the deer, I couldn't fathom how to describe hardly any of them. One was… guess it was a cornflower blue? And another was sort of dark brown with green edging on him… her… it. One had some small tentacles or fingers or whatever around the bottom of what _might_ have been its skull.

None I'd ever seen before. "These the samples?"

"That is correct. It is natural that the scientific staff would not perm-mm-mit one such as yourself anywhere near the sam-mm-mples. Your class are notorious for breaking fragile equipm-mm-ment. Funding was cut off some timm-me ago, and replacem-mm-ments for the equipm-mm-ment the staff has now are nolonger available." No shit about that part. The feet of every single tube had rust on it. "Please refrain from touching anything while we take this mm-minor detour. I apologize for the need to pass through here; m-mmain access routes are currently shut down and will be inaccessible until m-mm-aintenance arrives to repair them-mm."

Well, at least I wasn't a branch of maintenance… as the word 'hazard' implied.

"Mm-mm-many of the sam-mm-mples you see here are quite old, and som-mm-me are fragile and m-mm-must be handled with great care. M-mm-moving them has becom-mm-me an arduous task indeed." The monitor continued.

I shut him out after a while, giving the tubes passing glances to see what was inside each as the monitor rattled on and on about them. I found myself quite relieved when I never saw anything I recognized, but if the monitor wasn't bluffing, then this corridor was something of a corner off the block compared to what the facility at large actually contained. Out the other side, we took a right and headed around a bend to a set of stairs – interesting! – that took me up to another corridor. They were universally narrow (about as wide as I was, plus an inch or two) and mathematically perfectly rectangular. Every corner was a perfect ninety-degree angle, the edge of the walls where they met almost sharp enough to cut yourself on. Rather frightening, really. I wondered what exactly had occupied this place in the past.

Finally, we got through all the winding tunnel-like corridors and I was led through yet another doorless entryway into a refreshingly open chamber. It looked a lot like a badly trashed barracks, to tell the truth. There was shit _everywhere_. Most of it looked like it didn't belong there… but there were some crumbled bones in the middle of one heap and I carefully didn't look too closely.

At the far end of the room, the monitor stopped moving and turned around to show me the diamond-shaped eye it wore. "Here is your equipm-mm-ment. Once you have squared yourself, report to the Comm-mm-mmander's office for debriefing. You mm-may be needed imm-mm-mediately for duty."

I looked around once, then down at the… guess it was a locker once. "Okay." No instruction manual? I watched as the monitor toodled away again, apparently content to go and monitor something else for a while.

Well, at least I could go back to being human for a moment… I looked back at the crumbles of rusted metal, and after resisting the temptation to wipe it away – the _last_ thing I needed was _that_ crap stuck into my fingers – I reached through it and lifted out the first bit of something or other.

It turned out to be a bowl-shaped bit. Looked like it might be a pauldron of some kind. I whacked it against the edge of the locker to knock loose the rust that had settled onto it from the locker's decay, then set it aside. I spent the better part of the next thirty minutes just picking armor pieces out of the mess, but once I was done doing that, I found something else down in the bottom.

Lifting it out, I tapped the corner of the perfect square on the side of the locker, then tilted it back flat and blew on it. It looked a little like a mirror at first, but I knew there was more to it than that, which was what had my attention. I tipped it back and forth a few times, then looked at myself in the reflection it offered.

"Huh."

As if it were sound-activated, or something, a tiny dot of black appeared in the middle of the mirror, broadening like an ink stain in water until it wasn't reflective anymore. I felt the square get warm in my hand, then a picture faded in, showing a _really_ bizarre landscape with some equally as alien vegetation around the edges. In the middle, and the object of the picture, was a half-curled alien creature, and just as I'd figured, it was skinny as a skeleton and wound up like a grasshopper.

Which explained the narrowness of the corridors. For Human occupation it just wasn't practical. For these guys? Guess it was. I set the picture down, and wondered how in the world I was going to make something designed to fit an emaciated alien fit _me_. The monitor eventually turned back up, though, and bobbed over to where I was sitting, puzzling over the strange and bizarre bits of armor plating. Some of it I could sort of guess. But it came in so _many_ pieces, it was hard to really tell.

"Have you found everything in order?" The monitor asked, zapping the living daylights out of the heap of rubble beneath it.

"I have no idea what to do with this." I admitted, looking up. "How does it work?"

"That m-mm-machine has been broken for a while." The monitor told me. "Why are you attem-mm-mpting to fix it? You should be preparing yourself for duty."

"Machine?" I swear, it really did look like armor. Really really.

The monitor did that bobbing motion again. Unlike with Forerunner Monitors, for this one it looked voluntary… and like it meant something. "Of course. You have not found your equipm-mm-ment?"

"Ah… no."

The monitor tsked at me, but then went past… or… over… me. I yelped when that stung the crap out of my entire left side, but before I had even protested the darn thing was over and past and beyond. I grumbled and rubbed that arm, but I did get up and turn around to see where the monitor was.

He'd come to a stop over a wholly other type of locker, this one taller and broader and busily automatically opening its still-intact doors. They'd rusted over, yes, and were quite crusty for it. But when I saw the edges of them I knew that the oxidation would be a _long_ time in eating through to the other side. More stale air gushed out of the locker, suggesting it had once been sealed or at least pressurized. I blinked at the dryness the captive air had, squinting one eye a little more than the other.

"Step nearer to the m-mm-machine. You will be m-mm-measured to ensure proper utility." The monitor told me.

I took one look at the 'machine' behind those doors and wanted to run screaming the other way. It looked like a nightmarish spider with all its cousin's legs attached to it. There were at least forty long hinged arms coming out of there, opening up to reveal the smooth centerpiece. "You're sure about that…?"

"It is natural for you to feel apprehension upon first introduction to this outfitter. It is not a fam-mm-miliar model. But I assure you, while it m-mm-may be a prototype m-mm-model, its function is quite standard and you will not be harm-mm-mmed."

I had my doubts about that last statement.

.

TORI-138

I felt a little torn. Yes, I'd gotten almost used to feeling sore and agitated at Flint all the time. But my self-directed confession of having gotten attached was no less in effect now than ever before. The line of thought that made me feel torn had come about because of this; I knew I was still not precisely on good terms with him. But I missed him terribly, and I found myself worrying about if that 'water' had really been as harmless as the name implied.

What were the odds of this planet having hydrogen-oxygen combo liquid basis? The truth? Slim. Slim to _none_, in fact. Being a scientist for the past thirty-three years made me all kinds of painfully aware of the chemistry happening around me.

The caustic chemistry between myself and Flint notwithstanding… of course.

But my new companion (still hadn't gotten his name) wasted no time and moved at an agreeable pace too. It wasn't dead-out fast-as-hell, which was good for my aching legs, but it wasn't a casual walk, either, which would have lent to a fidgety edginess. Flint was running out of time… that or he might well be, and I didn't want to take that risk.

So the Elite leading me (somehow) back to the place where I'd lost him was both a blessing and a conundrum. He was just like Flint, in fact… very few words. Said nothing when not prompted. I wasn't a chatterbug, and especially not when I'm huffing and puffing from the biggest workout of my life, but even I noticed that defining characteristic. It seemed that if you were active-duty military, and somehow managed to get into my proximity… you were the 'strong, silent type'.

It drove me nuts.

Finally, when I could see what looked like a clearing through the trees out ahead, I piped up, "I don't suppose you know Flint, huh?"

It took a whole _minute_ for him to answer me, but when he did, it came out sounding distracted; "What?"

"Flint." I repeated, feeling a hint of agitation touch my voice. Man, if I blew up on this guy for 'breaking the camel's back' because I was still rumpled at Flint from beforehand, then things were _really_ out of hand. I tried to check my temper where it was. Testy I could justify. Outright enraged was inexcusable. "You know him? From before?"

"The last time I worked anywhere near one of your creed was many years ago." He told me, lifting the branches of a fern out of his way as he continued forward. "I do not recall."

I sighed. "Well, he mentioned a couple of your kind once or twice." If I could curry favor for his cause, then maybe this guy's seeming nonchalance would evaporate and we could get down to business. "Know anybody called 'Taramee?"

I saw his head lift a whole six inches before he turned it and then the rest of himself around to look back at me. "'Taramee?" I drew up before I could walk into him.

Hope had kindled at the bottom of my upset guts; "Yeah. Or… uh…" I rattled my brains for another. There were five or so he'd named, and almost a hundred that he'd admitted to. Most of those had never gotten named. "Gaul… gah… um…" I screwed my face down into a knot for a second, trying to concentrate on the memory. When he mentioned someone, he usually did so in a nonchalant, casual way – the worst way for remembering what was said. "Guh-wee?"

That earned me a laugh. "G'wi… I do recall these warriors."

I felt a world of weight lift right off me. "So you know him, then? Which one are you?"

"I am Anuna." He said. "And what name has he told you of himself, other than… Flint?"

I paused, confused. "… uh… he doesn't have any other names, he's a Spartan."

I got a nod and a smug look, before the Elite turned away again and resumed walking. I hopped through the fern he'd brushed past to make his side. "Wait, wait up, there. What was that about? You know Flint doesn't really tell stories much… I got a handful of names and events, and nothing to connect the two."

"I walked with him on the Sacred Ring that you know as Delta Halo." Anuna told me, still sounding smug. Maybe it wasn't really smug, though, but merely amused.

"I don't really know anything about that… uh… mission." I admitted, right as we made the treeline and stepped out into the clearing. I immediately spied the doors and the carpet-roll of thin topsoil, and even the crumpled, collapsed spire that I'd kicked down. "We're here!" I exclaimed, before I could really stop myself. "You found it… you really did."

The Elite stepped easily over towards the closed doors lying flat to the ground, and looked down at them silently. I stepped up beside him, looking at the rusted metal myself.

About then, some logic hammered home like some well-placed thirty-millimeter rounds, and I turned around on Anuna with less than savory intent. "How did you know how to get here? I didn't give you more than the broken spire!"

I got a dead, slack look. Or… maybe that was my perception of it. Elite faces don't make expressions, after all. How in the world they communicate quietly when words are not appropriate, I do not know. Maybe I'm just biased or untrained to look for such things. But he really did look uninterested right then. Even his glossy black eyes looked uninterested.

I cleared my throat, using the sound to press the issue. "I'm serious."

"What do you want me to say, human?" Anuna asked me. "We are here… that is a dissolution reservoir. Your companion likely met his end less than an hour after falling inside it."

His words hit me like a fist to the stomach, and I doubled onto my knees for the shock of impact. Denial froze all neural function, and I could only stare in numb horror at his knees.

Flint was… _gone_.

I hadn't even gotten to say goodbye.

.

ANUNA-02

They were not my words. Not mine, not the truth. It was a curious connection, though. She had verified for me that yes, I did indeed know Flint. I knew him by another name, another identity. He was the same warrior, however, even by description. 'Zelis had not told any tales even when in my own company, sparing words only for when prompted… or when he needed something.

Or needed someone to know something.

And reaching the place at last, the Machine had decided to run a test, and then have a calculating look at the results. Machines are like that. But to lie to her like that… it had sucked all the life right out of her, I could see easily. She dropped as if killed, sinking instantly to her knees in defeat.

I wondered, looking down at her there, if perhaps she had a greater connection to 'Zelis than I had at first considered. I pitied her… but I couldn't get our mouth away from the Machine, to correct or defy. It was pondering what it was being shown, and it didn't want me to spoil the test situation nor muddle with its newfound subject.

She looked so sad, though… even hidden away from all the world inside that signature armor all Demons wore. I wanted badly just to tell her the truth; the reservoir would _not_ harm living tissue. According to the Machine, they were filled with a slush of nannites. They would disassemble things like metal, glass, and plastic, but wood, flesh and bone would not be touched. The soft gel base the nannites swam in would leave the stripped body feeling moist, which was why I had nearly drowned, but aside from that… there was no harm going to come to him simply for being dropped into the reservoir. However, when it detected the foreign contaminants in the nannite soup and drained, _that_ was when he would come into danger again.

Merely dropping into the dissolution reservoir itself was not going to hurt the human. Not in the least. Telling her he was in the same physical state as his armor and weaponry doubtless now were was a farce even I, in my dishonored state, could not stomach. The Machine was unwilling to see reason, though.

It reveled in the ability to gather new data like this. Fresh, untainted, in-the-field, unbiased. But what good would this do? What good would there be in knowing that announcing the death of a hero would cause a morale drop? I kept my mulling mind on a sharp, well-disciplined clamp. I did not want to offer the cold, unfeeling Machine any scientific queries to ask the poor female.

Personally, I had a few. But letting the Machine ask them for me would only make things worse. The 'test situation' did not get to linger long, though, when several of the type-5 rototractors appeared in the… ah, forgive me. I mean the _silent demonic killer robots_. Yes, the heat-laser shooting kind, with the teardrop shaped body and the small oscillating firing arms underneath. I would have glanced their way to see how many, and what direction their point of origin was, but the Machine still had control, and did not feel a glance worth the effort.

Stupid Machine.

We were both splashed with erupting particles from our surroundings, the droids typically unwilling to venture out of the trees and similarly bad shots at any sort of real distance. They got close, though, and it made us both spring away more on instinct than any real cognizant function of desire to flee.

I heard a more primal, agonized howl come out of the female than I have heard any creature emit, ever, in my entire life. And while the Machine argued with me about turning and running away versus taking our "hold-it-at-our-side-and-that-is-how-it-is-used" and shooting back, she spun on a heel, her human rifle shouldered and aimed within a single flinch, and had taken down three of the bastard robots before I won the argument, and joined her.

Previous to realizing she was making kills, the Machine had not considered fighting back to be an option for me. But seeing her do it made the dumb thing realize that yes, I can readily defend myself… given half a chance in hell, as the Human saying goes.

I sent quite a bit of plasma downrange, some of it striking, some of it merely setting fire to the bark on the trees and disorienting the remaining droids. We still had to duck and dodge the returning fire, as I well knew that the heat-lasers would pop right through anything… barring those trees, and it might well be an organic compound that similarly would block heat seeking radars.

Trees… foliage of any kind, truth be known, were like that, and it was just a fact of life that all warriors had to accept. I saw a shot pierce the breadth of one of the freestanding pillars, blowing moss and dirt everywhere in the process. The Machine duly informed me that the shot had been perfectly lined with a pre-existing perforation, blown several years ago by one of the hard munitions. Apparently, blasting the existing rubble to smaller rubble was difficult… though in fairness to the robots, that did explain why the rubble that was still here was _still here_.

Especially given all the shooting they did… and the fact that my people, the Brutes, and the Human next to me might well not be the first unfortunate species to use the stuff for cover against said robots.

I saw the last one – or what looked like the last one – smash and fall to the forest floor, and then heard the Machine grind over some relatively under-used victory-whoop programming. Personally I just wanted to roll my eyes… it was a stupid robot, just like the robots sent to kill me, and it always would be. For being capable of designing and implementing the upgrades dealt to me, it certainly was not behaving in much of a multi-functional manner. I guessed that maybe physical item manipulation was what it was best at, and likely all it was good for. Certainly situational analysis was beyond its meager processors.

I looked over to see the Human, and found her in an odd position indeed. She had sat down against her cover, legs splayed out as if she had lost the use of them, her arms dropped to her sides limply in a similar manner. The rifle that had once been in her hand now lay propped atop said hand, her grasp open and her fingers relaxed. I could tell her shoulders were down, but she was looking straight forward.

I got the feeling she was not looking at anything out ahead of herself, though.

The Machine was willing to allow me to do the moving for us, for the moment, so I took one – but only one – step in her direction. Fastening the DER to my thigh armor was out of the question, given what I was wearing, so I kept it in hand and hoped the Machine did not decide to use it on her at some point. "Come… we should go. This place is not safe."

Her voice sounded faint, and distant, but coming through an atmospherically sealed helmet with the mike barely an inch from her face, I knew it was a tonal and volume issue on her own part, and not the comn. "Nowhere is safe."

"Zelis would not wish you to lie there and surrender all position to this enemy." I argued, feeling just a little unwilling to venture off alone now I had finally found an ally. And the longer I could keep the Machine from shooting her in the back, the better. She might well be able to help me master the Machine, and escape this cursed world. At any rate, unless we both plunged into the dissolution reservoir, there was no way into the facility below us from here. "Come, we must go."

Finally, she raised her head, and pointed that haunting golden visor at us. Slowly, I saw her curl her fingers back around the grip on her rifle. "Who's Zelis?"

I tasted my mandibles once, contemplating the query and considering how best to answer it. I knew if I blatantly told her the truth as blatantly as the Machine had lied, she would never believe me. Especially not in her crushed emotional state. I had to wing it, and similarly guide her around the curve towards the truth in the same manner I needed in order to escape notice of the Machine for what I was up to. "Flint."

She did not reply; but she did pick up the gun, and climb back to her feet, so she stood upright when the next lance of heat lased the ground at her side.

.

FLINT-093

Okay, okay. So call me overly paranoid. But the 'outfitter' as the monitor had called it, was just that. It brought down bits of armored plating held in those long spider-arms and carefully made each one fit. What it did first though, was rather interesting; it poked a scanner nozzle out (maybe that's not what it was, but that's what it looked like) and determined that my exo layer was my skin, and then it applied a very strange, fuzzy spray-on skinsuit.

_That_ part was _really_ weird. Even going through the finer nuances of the ORION Project were nothing like that! Having spray-on felt applied was almost as tickly as standing in the middle of a wind storm full of downy feathers. But once it was on, it felt more like firm cotton, so I didn't… tried not to… complain. When that was on, it wound out several long sticky strings of what turned out to be some kind of elastic polyurethane… or hell, maybe it was spandex. I don't know. But it was wet-looking (at that point my fingers were buried under the felt/cotton/whatever, so I couldn't tell if it was as wet and sticky as it looked) and wound them around me at blinding speeds until the felt layer was covered completely. Apparently clothing came in a can for these guys.

Viola, new skinsuit.

After that, I got to wondering how I was supposed to get back _out_ of the thing (since it had been sprayed on, there was no entrance/exit closure on it anywhere) as the armored plates were produced. The outfitter started on my back, for some reason I cannot fathom, and worked the plating over my shoulders and down my arms before putting plating down my chest. I wanted rather badly to watch, because it looked fascinating as hell, but every time I bent my head down to look, one of the arms would trade off an armored plate and poke me in the forehead, straightening my viewpoint for me.

_Don't move, stupid._

When I pouted (the expression was only going to last about a heartbeat anyway, I swear) the arm that had poked me in the forehead carefully dropped to my mouth and poked that lip back in, too.

I wanted to scream at it, but I was more tickled by the gesture than annoyed, and it was harder to not laugh than it was to not scream. From what I was feeling, the belly and legs came on next, some of the arms tasked with that while some of the others set in bits around my wrists. I got to wondering if there were more bits around my wrists than around my chest, after a while… and the pieces had to be tiny! More still of similarly small size went down across my palms and up the insides of my fingers. If the suit was powered, maybe all the points were needed for articulation, because this kind of assembly even for Mjolnir would have been rather awkward. One does not cut the gloves off the arms of Mjolnir, after all. There are important contact lines that feed through the wrists down into the hands from the sleeves.

I was about to try to steal another glance – this time at my hands – when I felt plating start going on around my neck. At first it felt taut, and I was worried that the aspect would be a bother, but when the last piece was set in, the assembly was released by the outfitter and it relaxed into place, giving me plenty enough room.

Having finished everything else, the outfitter began to apply quick segments around my jawline and the back of my head. I watched out of the corners of my eyes for as long as I dared, but just when I was about to suppose I might be better off closing them for safety reasons until the machine was done with me, fully half the arms withdrew from my visual field.

At first I didn't try to move yet, though I felt entirely in control of my own balance so I knew I could if I did try. For a full second, absolutely nothing happened. So, risking correction from the outfitter yet again, I dropped my head to look down at myself. I felt my eyebrows pop upwards at what I was seeing.

I'd been plated over in what looked like tessel tiles. Each one was about as big around as my thumbprint would have been, and about half a centimeter thick. For a plate so small, that's a little on the thick side, but for armor, it's paper. The plates were all over… and if I unfocused my eyes, I almost saw a mockery of a pattern in their placement. Bringing a hand around in front of me, I saw the plates around my wrists and over my hands and fingers were smaller, more compact.

"Is that it?" If it was, I'd almost rather be naked, than be in this ridiculous excuse for a get-up…

"Please refrain from mm-mm-moving… the outfitter is preparing the exo-plating." The monitor informed me. I let my hand fall back to my side, and lifted my head, feeling I might be satisfied with that… provided the exo-plating looked a little more utilitarian than the tessel tiles I now wore. Aside from the skinsuit, my hands were bare, and sans the suit layers, my head still was. I had begun to contemplate if I'd need to shave the back of my head to get the suit around my jawline off again when I heard the outfitter buzz to life again. Here came the exo-plates.

One huge monster of a slab of metal swung around the frontside of my right shin, followed by the plate for the front of my other leg, and when I looked down to see what that had been, I saw the backsides of the boot legs press up against my calves and get stitched to the frontsides. This new layer sat directly in contact with the little tiles, but was easily some inch or inch and a half thick. That is, just a bit, somewhat more so than Mjolnir.

Nice.

I lifted my head again, a pleased smirk on my face. Now _that_ was more like what I had in mind… the exo-plating came out in massive chunks, but there was ribbing matted over my belly, ostensibly for flexibility, rather than one giant stiff plate. I got chest and back, then upper arm, and then a dual-connecting pauldron to attach one to the other on both sides. Just when I thought I might get to finally look at myself again, my thoughts were interrupted when a brightly reflecting sheet of convex glass dropped over the top of my head and in front of my face. I held still, wondering what it all looked like from the outside… but before I could ponder the feeling of the armor coiling around my fingers, I felt several latching points secure to me from behind, and I was lifted from the floor.

I only went about an inch up, before being set back down again. I now had bootsoles, I figured… because the floor felt different. When I felt my weight go back to my feet, and the stiffening contact points popped free of my upper body, I saw the domed visor go black as sin. I stood still for a second, squinting at it and trying to figure if the facility had lost power or if the suit was doing something independent of the external environment.

Just when I was about to try talking to the monitor-thing again, and see if I couldn't get a word out through my new helmet, it suddenly lit up bright as day, and dribbled lines of code down into what I quickly recognized as my new HUD. "Hey."

"_Curious_." Now the tinny voice was coming from behind my ears, suggesting the monitor was either between myself and the outfitter, or was putting its voice through a comn system inside my new outfit. When I saw the electric ball appear in front of me, I knew it was the latter. "_You have strange param-mm-meters_."

Oh, and now the outfitter had relayed the data on my shape, my blind monitor friend was about to ask me if I was an alien. And then I was going to get fried right off my bones.

Time to go!

"Meaning?" I tested shifting my balance before trying to take a step, and while it really wasn't that unlike being in Mjolnir, there was a nagging sense of over-powered-ness that I felt at the back of each motion I made. It was almost as if I hinted at starting to move, and then my new suit would pick me up and move me for me. Crazy. "Which way is out?"

"_The outfitter reported som-mm-me asym-mm-metric qualities to your frame. Do you have previous combat experience?_" You got some ugly scars there, buddy. What have you been up to?

I grinned mirthlessly. "Yeah, yeah. Which way is out?"

Surprisingly enough, the monitor bobbed once. "_Of course… m-mm-medical examination occurred prior to your disem-mm-barkation. If you had not cleared, you would not have been perm-mm-mitted facility access… I will upload an axis m-mm-map into your helm-mm-met display. I m-mm-must return to m-mm-my work. Duty calls in the ancillary sections._" With that, the sparky ball twisted about and crawled on lines of jumping electricity towards the door I had come in through.

I waited, wondering what that meant… and why my Human-shaped body hadn't raised any eyebrows on what was supposed to be a grasshopper-shaped society. Maybe the monitor was just that rusty around the brains. Shortly, an additional icon appeared, right atop the one that I had no clue what it meant, and showed a series of lines and corners with a small circle in the middle. I squinted at it. Was this supposed to be some kind of demented map? A moment later, a triangle popped into existence at the top of the square of lines with the dot in the middle, and flashed once.

_Go this way, dummy_.

When I took my first step forward, I really felt that over-powered-ness come into play. I lurched hard forward, so fast and so heavily that I dropped that foot hard and brought up my other one in a stumbling bid for balance. I got bent at the waist before I knew it, and my arms pinwheeled once before I got to the wall some five meters to the left (in about six staggering steps) and caught it, stopping myself.

"Holy shit!" I complained, leaning on the wall a little more just to be sure my suit didn't try to run off with me again. "This is going to be awkward, I can tell…" but now my little circle was tucked into a corner, rather than against a flat line, and that's when I realized what I was looking at. That little circle was _me_.

Straightening, I flexed my fingers and squared my shoulders; time was a-wasting, and I needed to get moving before something actually _did _come up and I lost a fight with the same glitchy machines that had given me this monster of a suit. Every step I took felt like ten tons of impact, but it was only jarring to the tune of about four. Still… I half wondered if my augmentations weren't what was doing this to me. I kept trying to treat it like a standard suit of Mjolnir, and it kept trying to treat me like a casual Marine type.

Like I needed help that I really didn't… so to compensate, I tried taking an easy, casual, slow and calculated step forward. The result caught to a kind of drop-gears-and-rev-it-up. If this monster was like driving a Warthog, though, then that was a new one on me. I hadn't been in a Warthog in a long while. So long, in fact, that I might be a bit hesitant with the controls at first.

If I survived this suit, though… I felt I'd be the best damn driver in the universe. I got myself walked to the door, the map moving around my dot rather than my dot moving through the map, but the triangular pointer stayed at the edge where it wanted me to be going at the moment. Rather than pointing at the door I was now facing, it was telling me to retrace my steps up the corridor I'd used to get here in the first place.

I staggered through the door and knocked my shoulder off the wall, grinding against it for a while before I managed to right my balance again, realizing I'd over-extended myself again without knowing that's what I'd done. Boy, if I managed to get outside, I could make the full extension the suit had to offer and _then_ figure out how to go slow, and what modes of slowness it had to offer. But if I didn't know what fast was, I'd never find the right amount of tentative maneuvering that it would take to make myself just plain _walk_.

The pointer took me up several strange corridors, to a large open well that went _down_ a long, long ways… but looking up the hole, I saw it also went up. However, if this was an elevator/gravity lift, it wasn't in working order anymore. So, sans that, I reached for the lip of the ceiling and hoisted myself up using my arms.

Wow! My bum shoulder was at Mjolnir-grade strength for my good arm, and the good shoulder was so hopelessly overpowered I almost slung myself right off my new handhold and took a long plummet. In an attempt to compensate for that, I pulled my left back (since that's my best aiming hand) and stabbed my armor plated fingers (they felt really fat) at the material the wall was made from. They went through, and dug a nice handhold into the divot. Ah, so my next idea really _would_ work.

In quick succession, I pounded handholds one over the other, on occasion kicking at the wall and hoisting up with a toehold too. I knew I had to be moving at an insane speed for climbing a formerly smooth surface going up on only my own power, but it still took me some five or so minutes to reach the top. Call it an hour, if I'd had no help with it. Give or take.

At the top, past some eight or so other openings that led down other corridors, I found what looked for all intents and purposes to be a large docking bay for fighters. What really got me was the fact that _this_ room screamed _upside down_ to me. Even the simple architecture said it… but whatever was loose had been repositioned on the ceiling, which was now the floor.

Since the "axis-map" was still active, and I supposed maybe the monitor's comn might still be on, I asked aloud, "Is this place supposed to be upside down?"

The monitor sounded no better from a distance, but my suspicion was proved correct when I got an answer; "_No, but it settled that way_."

"It settled?" I echoed, feeling my guts start to twist. I set out across the breadth of the room, passing what looked like old ruins of fighters, most of which were crumpled, some of which had collapsed upon their landing struts, and all of which were rusted through. "Do you mean to tell me this place moved here from somewhere else?"

"_Interstellar research stations often double as shuttling points, and are capable of independent m-mm-movement. I recognize that we do not often m-mm-move, Hazard, but at times, we have been known to. Landing here was not by intention, however. Records of the tim-m-mefram-mm-me have corrupted, but there rem-mm-mains som-me mm-em-mm-mory files that mm-make that mm-much clear_."

That's when my guts _really_ twisted. I was on a _starship_!

Gulp.

I found what looked like a hullside access port and went for it, but it was rusted shut and even my new suit wouldn't give me enough torque to wrench it open anyway. Going across to the other side found me another one, which hadn't rusted nearly as badly, though. That one did pop open, but the door came completely off so I set it aside before I peeked through. Evidence of why the place was so oxidized greeted me; tree roots perforated the entirety of the narrow tunnel upwards, but the topcap was already gone, and I could see a peek of daylight through a nodding treetop.

Even before I started to climb up through it, I saw a saucer zip by overhead. Pausing, I asked, "Hey, monitor. What is the state of the automated defense grid?"

"_The system-mm was rated for a ten-year lifespan, but I am-m proud to announce that I have m-mm-managed to keep it operational at optim-mm-mal levels for the entirety of the tim-me between the last maintenance check and now_."

"Which is what." I prompted, still looking up.

"_Four thousand six hundred seventy one solar years."_

I'm not certain, but the last time I recall, a _solar_ year is a bit more than a planetary rotation. That's a _long time_. "How many personnel survived landfall?"

"_All of them-mm_."

So they slowly died out one by one after the fact. Which meant this tub had been sitting here getting buried by the terrain for longer than the previously mentioned time. That did explain why the room was upside down, but none of the occupying equipment was. The staff had turned it all over, I imagine, after everything came to a stop.

"Right. I'm going to step outside, have a look around." I reached for the first tree root, the thing nearly as big around as my arm. As an afterthought, I added, "Keep the lights on for me."

"_Of course, Hazard_."

When I made the topcap, the map vanished and the comn signal connecting me to the monitor cut. I recognized the icon for active channel right as it winked out, too.

Now I was on my own.

Time to see what my new toy could really do.


	6. Never Forgiven

**6: Never Forgiven**

**ANUNA-02**

Convinced there was nothing here to stay for, but acting a little bereft of another place to be, my new human counterpart took us off through the trees again. It was not without merit, though… our position was overrun with bullets from too many directions, and we had to move or be cut down. The robots would never fly into the openings, I suppose, but they had no qualms with shooting into or through them.

As I followed the female warrior into the treeline, I wondered why. For the first time, my aloud thought got no answering response from the Machine. Reaching the treeline, and subsequently, cover, I saw the human swing right. I had been about to balance left, but instead chose to follow her and see where she was going. She charged headlong through the ferns, heedless of the massively obvious trail she was blowing through it all. I stepped mainly in her tracks, but there was almost no reason to. I over-printed them with the cloven V of my hooves.

She had an extraordinarily long gait for a Human, and was almost as quick as I would have been, before the Machine had altered me. Augmented as I was, I could have caught and passed her had I the wont. But I was patient, and I wanted to know what she thought she was up to…

I soon learned that there is meaning to the primal scream in more ways than the Brutes use it… she circled around through the treeline until we had come halfway around, I suppose doing it like that for the cover, but we came right up onto the retreating flank of seven of the heat-laser robots. She blew them all out of the air, efficiently brutal in each precision kill.

I was – the Machine was – awed. Myself because of her manner and style, and because I had not realized the true depth of her pain before then. And the Machine, because it did not realize that her creed of Human did that sort of thing on _casual_ days. If my captor was a scientific study AI, and had no concept of battle or the finer nuances thereof, I would be very frustrated with it very soon, I just knew.

In the mean time, the slender female demon was bent as hell on flattening every robot in the forest… and hardly had the last teardrop hit the mossy soil than she had started moving again, reloading her weapon on the fly. Her motions were quick, and looked practiced, but she took the time to do a few things that made me wonder just how long she had been at it… was she new? She was not bad, or faulty, or even particularly incompetent. She had a grace about her that would have been the envy of the finest dancers of Sangheilios. But that does not make up for battle prowess, something 'Zelis had had in surplus.

He was… heh… not particularly graceful.

Capable, yes. As were all who survived their first combat drop. And their second. But grace was reserved for those who embedded themselves deeply within the more specialized reserves of any given military force. I followed the female through the brush wondering if she had a sense for where to find her enemy or if she were blindly tromping and hoping to get found.

It proved to be the former… the cloud of them we came to then was a little bigger, though, something that made the Machine grapple for the controls, and wrest them away from me. I fought, screaming in silent protest as I was sucked away from my own functions. I could still see, could still hear, but even as the Machine demonstrated pitiful aim with the DER we held, I began to notice things I knew the Machine was not looking at.

Things like the fact that there was more than one point of origin for the Human rifle fire. I observed quietly at first, but it didn't take a genius to notice after a robot broke apart around erupting shrapnel and a cry of _"Hoo-ah!"_

The female demon had ducked after several to the side, leaving us alone at the back of our initial assault point. The Machine should have known to move more than it was, but we stepped cautiously instead of quickly, and so we had a nice view when we came around a tree after the next (but certainly not the last) robot. Hot lasers lanced the ferns around us, but even as bullets tore into the hull of the thing from behind, the Machine regarded the ruddy-faced Marine ahead of us with something less than what I found satisfactory.

_No! _

I watched helpless to stop it as the Machine shot him down.

The depth of my dishonorable fall from glory dawned on a new day for me then. If the female demon saw me commit that atrocity, she would doubtless best my idiot Machine in battle and cut us both down. On the one hand, that was not a bad thing. But I craved vengeance against the Machine, and I knew that killing me would not harm the Machine. I needed to be freed from its grasp, so that I might return to the point of my shame and destroy it properly.

The Machine blew several more of the robots out of the sky, their glossy flanges and bulbous fronts fracturing under the plasma pouring from the DER in our hand. But the Marine had not been alone, and soon enough we encountered the rest of the men. I caught a glimpse of the demon's upper half over the top of a fern, but the Machine did not care who saw what. It also did not understand the merits of associative allegiance. We shot down two more of the meagerly armored humans before a fourth saw what had dropped the third and turned his little guns at us, screaming in protest.

Without preamble, the Machine fired back. He ducked successfully once, peppering our own dodging front with a magazine of sub-machine gun fire. I felt the bullets sting, felt one of them dig into a joint where the Machine had not armored me. The rest bounced off after leaving their stinging admittance of impact. I had no shields… curious.

But the squall of the last man down had gotten attention away from the panicking robots above us, and in the confusion of detonating robotics and rattling gunfire, I caught the glimpse of a golden reflection of sunlight.

Barely had the Machine swiped our claws over the face of the final Marine and yanked him off the ground by it – the motion broke his fragile neck – than we felt the harsh impact of the butt-end of a rifle land across the side of our own neck. We dropped the human and dropped to a knee, but though the Machine turned to face the point of origin for the assault, it did not correlate the demon's standing there with what had just happened.

I did.

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?" She was screaming. She peeled back and smacked us across the face with the butt of that rifle again, and before we could recoil from the impact, she struck again. "You murdered them!"

While the Machine could not understand why it was under attack from what it had been told was an ally, I in turn could not understand why she was not merely killing us and getting it overwith. Instead we were subjected to the punishing pummeling of the back-end of her rifle, until finally we had curled onto the ground, where she sent a hard boot into our ribs as final statement.

"Don't you _ever_ do that again, you pea-brained split-chinned bastard, or I'll gut you up one side and down the fucking _other_!" With that, she turned away and took off after the last visible robot. Apparently, their core processor was able to understand when it had been whipped, and the robots had been pulled back into a retreat. This, despite the ache granted our head and our ribs, refocused the Machine's disorientation. Shrugging off the pain – relatively speaking, it was admittedly mild, compared to what it ought to have been – and stood us up again.

But oh! The female was quite mad, indeed.

.

**FLINT-093**

When I ran flat-out, pushing as hard as I could, I went for a total of five seconds – I counted them – and did a terrific face-plant squarely into the trunk of a tree nine times as big around as I was.

Ow.

My impact did not knock the tree over, but I knew I made it think about the prospect. I had made a nice three-foot-deep divot of splintered and crushed wood fibers at my impact site, but you could really tell that whatever had run into the trunk had had legs. There was obvious parting at the bottom of the crushed spot. It was not, however, quite man-shaped.

I managed to shake the stars out of my eyes without unbalancing myself, but now I knew what full extension was like. I added that to my ever-growing checklist of don'ts, and began to navigate the forest at what amounted to a casual run. Personally, it took about as much effort as a half-hearted trot, but at the speed I was passing up trees right and left (with barely enough brakes to navigate reliably), my 'casual run' amounted to about sixty or seventy kph. Think big spotted cat, full-tilt chasing dinner down.

That'd be me.

Except there was no dinner involved, and food was pretty much the last thing on my mind. Rather, I was wondering how in all hells I was supposed to navigate this damn forest, since everywhere looked the same to me, and I had gone through gods-only-knew how much subterranean starship to come to my exit point. My HUD was confusing as hell, but so long as I could walk and see out, I was okay with that… for the moment. Being weaponless was a nagging itch, though.

When I saw something above fern-height out ahead, I went that way, figuring if they were droids, then maybe if they had a point of origin (and were not idly patrolling) then maybe I could retrace that and hope that it was somewhere I'd seen before. I didn't really get that chance, and even if I had, I doubt it would have made much difference. The droids (saucer model) saw me before I could tell which direction they had been traveling originally, and some of them changed vectors to intercept me. I really felt that first thirty-millimeter round, too.

It zipped straight at me, the very, very first round fired out, and I saw it coming enough to know I was going to get hit squarely. Not enough to be able to duck, though. When it hit, it really did hit me squarely center-of-mass, and dug in hard against my exo-plating. I felt the joints all go rigid – but not too stiff to move – against the blow, and just when I wished badly I had my MA, I felt my pauldrons shift and crawl.

That was the weirdest feeling to date.

It took me about a second to realize there were _guns_ on my _shoulders_… but not long at all for me to recognize their utility meters. Weapon stats blinked up over my left eye, then my right, and then the pair synched and one reticule traced down to lock onto the saucer that had hit me while the other zeroed in on a follower. I had no idea how to make my sudden guns shoot, but when I closed my hands into fists, they began to belt out responding bullets.

Big ones! It was one half thrill and one half fright, but I pummeled the leading saucer out of the air and then focused both guns on the second one. Responding fire had mulched my surroundings, but when I next looked to see what was happening that I nolonger felt anything hitting me, I got to watch something pretty spectacular. As each thirty-millimeter slug came at me, the exo-plating would consolidate what looked like points of electric origin, then blow out a fat, scary-looking arc right where the round was calculated to hit. As the arc made contact with the slug, said slug would explode into shrapnel in a funnel cloud aimed away from me. The rounds were being punched right out of the air without pause to let them impact, not at all like my old solid-state shields.

Like I said. Spectacular! I wished Mjolnir armor had that function.

I started to put lead downrange (if it wasn't something else entirely I was shooting) when my guns suddenly disengaged on me, and put themselves away. I squeaked in protest, but at least the arc-puncher was still working. I ducked behind a tree anyway, just in case that feature had an exhaustion point. I stood there with my back to the trunk trying to figure out what I'd done in the first place that made the guns come out, listening to the sound of the annoying buzzing whine starting to surround me. Under it, I began to hear something else… rifle fire.

Rifle fire?

Tori!

I have no idea what happened to my brains, but I jumped around the tree trunk aiming for the source of that prattle of human munitions, all ready to punt the saucers out of the air with my bare fists if I had to. Tori had an MA, and I did not. That was something I was familiar with, something subsequently reliable. I don't know what I expected her to use after I stole it from her, but I wasn't thinking that far ahead. Indeed… why I leapt out in the first place was under some question; especially when I came face to face with the leading edge of one of the saucer droids.

My arc-puncher punched the idiot droid right out of the sky when it tried to shoot me point-blank, but when I bristled in alarm in reply, I saw my HUD reticules reappear. I raised both fists and crushed them down, burning ammunition fast and hard into two separate buddies of the first. There is no shame in being unwilling to waste a single second of a weapons' availability.

I was a soldier, god dammit, not an idiot! (even if I sometimes act like one…)

I was surrounded, though, and the saucers liked their elbow room. I was able to fire simultaneously at two as I came upon them, but the more I twisted around and around, the more I began to think I would never dig myself out of this heap of wrecked battle bots. While nifty as hell to watch and certainly detrimental (to some degree… it had a limited effective range) to the droids, my arc-punch proved to have a minor downside to it when I got pounded across one shoulder and wasted a buttload of ammunition trying to shoot through the resulting shrapnel.

I got annoyed, just a bit, but I kept it together. I was in my element, doing what I did best… but what had me all sorts of bothered was the part where I had never really seen these things before, and I had no idea where they came from or who was controlling them. If the monitor that had given me this armor was any indicator, then their base of operation was likely as old and just as fully automated. That did not stop them from being a pain in the ass. I've never shot down a Forerunner Sentinel before, but I'd heard all about it. Shooting these things down, though… they were easily twice as big and twice as bulky, with twice the attitude problem. Perhaps it was making up for the shortcoming of being utterly unable to do anything about _me_, whilst I systematically flattened them all.

Finally, I saw the dreaded exhaustion point reach out, and the arc that punched the round from in front of my face proved to be half-hearted and also the last. I spun around involuntarily at a harsh spray across my left side, but my spin was countered by the other systems in the suit – such as how when I intended to move, it would move me for me, and I had not moved in a manner to make myself spin like that.

I still wound up on my face in the dirt, but at that point, I was all for just dropping it and running hell for leather the other way. I had no idea if my direction of choice was the same direction I'd heard rifle fire from a while ago, but I could always reconnoiter later and investigate. For the moment, I'd been outgunned, and now I needed to figure out what to do with myself while my armor decided what to do with _it_self. I had no idea if the arc-punch would recover, or recharge, or if it was dead once it was dead and I was now SOL.

I ducked under a half-propped fallen tree on my way out, aware there were only a few more left. The first two overshot rather badly, having revved up to match my initial speed… but this thing had some remarkable brakes, and with just a minor slide through the soft soil, I got stopped fully in under twenty feet. At first I went to go parallel with the fallen tree, hoping to use it to hide further, but when I saw the first two overshoot, it was just too much to resist. An agitating enemy with its back turned for it is just like free candy.

I shot both down out of the sky. I could hear a third – at _least_ one more out there – but I didn't see it immediately. I started to try to look for it, but that first thundering impact that had dropped me on my face came back to me in a delayed responding detonation of the ordinance inside that shoulder. I set my jaw, annoyed, but one thing my new suit had very much in common with Mjolnir…

I couldn't dig my thumb through this stuff, either.

.

**TORI-138**

I felt better when I was taking it out on the droids. It helped to stabilize my sense of loss. All the mean things I had said to him were beating me to a bloody pulp now, all the nasty things I had done. I acutely remembered striking his weak shoulder, even when I knew what that would do to him. Flint had been tough as nails, but even a nail will bend if you hit it wrong.

Meeting up with Marines had been a bit of a surprise… we had company, that fast? Had it been that long? I was so wound up, I hadn't looked at my mission clock since we'd left the sloop. Running from droids, chasing droids down, shooting at droids, being shot at by droids. Sure, their munitions would likely go right through me. But my bullets tore them all to scrap, too, and I was faster on the draw.

Having to deal with the idiot splitlip blowing the heads off of all the men, though… that had been weird and frightening and confusing and ominous… and I knew I wanted to kill him, too, just because I needed the vent, but I needed him. I needed someone, something, that was going to stay. I knew he could get me around, to just about wherever I needed to go, and I also knew that he knew Flint. That he seemed to feel no remorse for the admission of Flint being dead now hadn't occurred to me yet.

I was too busy being hurt by it, myself. I knew if he pulled another stunt like that one with the Marines, though… positive aspects my ass. I'd pop a cap in his head so fast he wouldn't know it'd been me that done it. I wasn't really angry at all, though. Not outwardly, at least. I was plenty mad at myself. But I knew the Elite thought I was pissed off at everything in general just by the way he kept looking at me.

Without anything to readily kill, I found my gun sagging in my grasp and blinding tears begging again. With what the forest harbored being mainly at large, and god only knowing how many of them there were, I did not have the luxury of collapsing in tears. I needed to be able to see, and I was not about to take my helmet off so I could wipe my eyes. I might get caught doing it, and then be dead for my trouble.

I missed Flint… I did not want to join him.

It was proving a hard hurdle just coping, knowing he wouldn't be there to grump at me or give me one of those quiet I'm-not-going-to-tell-you-shit smirks of his… I had always thought that being on a solo op without Flint would be a physical hardship. My inability or lack of experience with certain bits of military cadence, and whatnot. But when the event finally came to call… it was my emotions that were working me over.

I won't say I was heartbroken. I wasn't out of denial enough for that yet. But it sure hurt like hell. I wanted to go back to the sloop, dig out as much plastic as we had, drop the whole thing on those doors and blow the entire forest to hell peeling them open. I wanted to see the body… or given the method of death, the murk. I needed closure, and I knew there was only two ways to get it – seeing his lifeless carcass for myself, or having some ten or fifteen years to come to terms with the lack thereof.

I didn't have the stomach for either.

I also didn't have the first clue where the damned sloop _was_. I needed to strip out of my armor, put the guns away, curl up on the bed with the cat and cry myself to sleep in a ship even emptier than ever before. I couldn't handle being forced to stay active, alert, and on my toes like this. I just didn't have the option. It seemed every single mistake I had ever committed was coming alive in my mind, turning into monsters too great to best, too powerful to stand against. I was breaking down with every step I took, and I knew it.

I stepped through the treeline into a clearing I'd not yet crossed (I could tell because there were no tracks through the mossy ground) and paused to consider what I wasn't looking at anymore. Behind me, I could hear the Elite tromping along like he didn't give a shit who heard him coming. He was rather clumsy for someone who had walked through the fires of Delta Halo. Surely someone like that would have a lighter, softer step. I had heard the difference between the two displayed in Flint… aboard the ship, especially when he took to puttering about barefoot, he'd be plenty noisy about making steps, and never seemed to care. But get him in his half-ton of armor and set him on the battleground, and he'd get quiet like a whisper, even when crossing hard, unforgiving surfaces like crete.

My thoughts soon strayed as they usually do, and I finally focused on the clearing. Looking around at the seeming lack of architecture the opening had to offer made me wonder what kept the clearings open… especially the empty ones. Was there something under the surface that got close at certain points, and made the ground too thin to support something like a tree as big around as a Pelican? Considering the one that had swallowed Flint, that was rather likely.

I pouted meaningfully at the clearing; no matter where my muddied brains went, somehow I always managed to come back around to him. After leaving the asteroid, he'd been really all I had for company anymore. Still… this was making it difficult to get over it at least for long enough to get something useful done.

Like finding where we'd hidden our sloop.

"Any idea which direction the mountains would be, from here?" I asked, eventually. Hell… if we ran into more enemy between here and there, I was game for that. Shooting made me feel better. Shooting and killing gave me something to focus on that was almost as traumatic but with less of an emotional investment.

"I am unsure. There are a number of mountain ranges on this continent."

Great.

"To which did you intend to travel?"

I cast the lout an unappreciative look, but I have no idea if he caught it. "Never mind… which one is _closest_?"

Immediately, he turned partway and pointed past me. Across the clearing? Had I made some kind of demented half-moon arc through the woods? Boy… go far enough on my original track and I'd find mountains sure enough. But then I'd be confused as to which way to go from there. Not to mention, the memory of needing a whole lot of help just to get down the rocky slide into the trees nagged.

Man, I _hate_ open spaces…

But with a sigh, I turned that direction and began to walk. Right as I did, I felt the ground stir lightly, and I paused. "… what was…" I didn't get to say "that" before the Elite reached out and snatched me by my shoulder and yanked me back so fast I stumbled off my balance and knocked right into him.

He wasn't holding still, though, rather being in full and hasty retreat. I kicked to get traction, and once I had it, I twisted free in time to knock my other shoulder into a tree and drop myself to my knees involuntarily. I can pretend to be klutzy with the best of them, after all. But I turned around once I stood back up, and I saw the place had grown several rusty spires, and coming out the top of said spires were more droids. All of them – and there were a lot – arched down and came buzzing after me, so I turned and made tracks.

I'd have been standing in the middle of that mess like a stupid idiot if Anuna hadn't gotten my attention off my own woes… but even still, as I ran I noticed I couldn't see the Elite anywhere. A glance at my motion tracker donut had me angling hard to the right, steering around a dozen trees in a zigzag pattern to catch up to him again. He got behind another tree from me, and when I came around it after him, I found he'd drawn up to a sudden stop back there.

He turned out from ahead of me so I didn't plow right into him, sticking his plasma rifle into the air and firing off several plasma rounds in my defense. I heard something mechanical smash and explode on itself, so when I hit the roots of the next tree up I turned around and shouldered my MA.

That was when I realized what the bulb-shaped part of the machines were for. The fifth one back peeled itself open like an onion and sprouted a shoot that was less than savory looking. When the first round shunted out of it, it headed up with a pair of spiraling flanges trailing blue smoke after it. The munition was about as big around as my hand, and it screamed like a woman being murdered brutally as it sailed in an arc through the air over my head.

I had just enough time to duck when it blew the top right out of the tree I'd been against a moment before, and instantly there were massive amounts of timber coming down to get me. I wasn't sure which way to go to avoid being speared to the ground by all the crashing limbs, so I feinted in a few directions before choosing finally and making a run for it.

"Stop! Stop! Not that way!"

I don't know why he bothered to speak at all, but I was grateful nonetheless when I felt an arm coil around my middle and yank me back, right out from under the shattered butt-end of a branch as big around as I was and some thirty thousand times as long.

I was rolled out of the Elite's grasp headed in a new direction through the falling timbers, and given a push to speed me on my way.

Okay, so maybe not having killed him earlier wasn't such a bad mistake on my part.

.

**ANUNA-02**

Running under a barrage of artillery was not something I had done since before the Schism, and at the time, it had been even before my ascension to Honor Guardianship. I had been quite the young, brash warrior then. Now, I was disgraced, shamed and desperate just to find and challenge my tormentor just once before I met my dishonorable end. I wanted to be remembered as the hapless fellow who went to investigate an anomaly and vanished within it, never to be seen again.

I did not want to be remembered as the savage animal the Machine had reduced me to. Hopefully the depth of my actions at its command thus far would not leave a terrible mark across the stars in the receding path of this human Demon.

She was such a spry little thing, so nimble. Given just enough time to process what the environment looked like, what was happening to what extent in what place, and where her assailants were, and which direction they were headed at the immediate moment… alright, so that is a lot of information. However, it is not all that much to ask, given that it does not involve hoarded intel that any given enemy force might not want the target to have.

Allow me to summarize… given enough time to grasp the full situation, she was highly unlikely to run afoul of much. I had needed to redirect her initial flight path, yes. But I got the feeling as I followed her through the crashing tree top that it had been an instinctual, un-judged dart to avoid an immediate death in favor of a not-so-immediate one.

That I had had enough time to correct her, and not join her, was a minor miracle. But that she knew where to be and where not to be at any given time once past that point was like watching poetry in motion. I was at a heightened state of alert, and yet still sluggish and feeling affronted that I was being left behind when I _needed_ to be high as a kite on adrenalin, and yet even I, in my augmented, shamed state, could not keep up with her dancing steps.

I felt a falling branch clip me across the back, and surely it would have torn all the muscle from my bones had I not had the armor I now wore on. Even still, I felt the metal sheathing tug mightily on my frame, and I heard the scream of the stuff tearing, and I knew I had been given a nasty gouge across the backplate. I felt the bullet the human soldier from before had given me begin to itch, but it was a minor note of self-awareness amid a thrashing storm of streaming data. My brain was running fast enough to process it all, but I knew if it got any faster, I would be quite dead quite soon.

And right when I thought that I had covered a hundred miles and still was not near the edge of that collapsing tree, we broke the edge and surged out across open, uncontested air through the trunks of trees nonplussed by their neighbor's demise.

Oh… perhaps not demise. But it was quite the trim! Things like plants are hard to kill by merely chopping their tops out. One must do better than that… uprooting usually does the trick, though not always. Ahead, I saw the human female strike three steps up a trunk, spin over herself in mid-air, and then land braced facing back the way we had come. She had her rifle in her hands again, and was waiting, I suppose, for any of the robots to come over or through the settling branches. None did while I had my back turned, but I slowed us to a stop and turned around without running upwards across a tree trunk first. As such, I was a little off my guard when the Machine tore me off the control and pushed me into the back again.

My protests went unheeded, and I felt like I was clawing at a steel plate some foot or so thick, fighting against that punishment. What had I done? Why was I being tormented like this? Surely there was no reason! The Machine analyzed the data around the cropped tree top resting upside down on the forest floor, wedged up inside of a circle of its own trunk and some seven others. Some of the branches were still shaking, though much of that had stilled.

Behind us, I could hear other noises, but just as the Machine turned us around, we all three heard that wail of absolute, high-pitched agony. "Move, move!" The Demon issued, turning and leaping back into a fleeing run. The Machine followed her, obediently, but I was focused on listening to that other set of sounds, somewhere out ahead of us now. Since the falling artillery round was not my problem – if it killed us then it would not have been my fault – I could commit full brainpower to it.

I caught myself smiling… brothers!

But the feeling dimmed considerably. Surely they would recognize my shamed state at once and would cut me down out of a sense mercy, and then I would never be able to return to the Machine's core and destroy it. While having no especial wont to remain alive like this, I also did not feel quite ready to let go. I wanted my revenge, first. But the Machine was in control, and we pounded along out from under the next exploding, crashing tree that was shredding as it came down, bouncing from trunk to trunk as it fell. I could not make it listen when it thought it knew best, and I could only really effect what it did if it needed information out of me. Such as the use of the DER the Demon had foolishly given us.

Sure enough, as soon as the noble warriors came into our view, the Machine aimed and fired. Amid the immediate heyday of a swarm of the disk-shaped robots attacking, there was little time to notice. Their team had scattered and were hopping about through the trees using the trunks as temporary cover. It pained me to see them go down under robot fire, but it was worse when I watched my own hand extend and depress the firing stud on the DER I held. I slew one, and then a robot, and while I was firing on the robot, I saw several of the Elites cast me glances – myself, I noted, as well as my Demon companion.

She, too, was shooting down robots. When the immediate threat of the particular looming robot was gone, the Machine cut down two more of my unfortunate, unsuspecting brethren, sickening me to the core of my soul. I could not stop it, and I could not fight it for the controls. I was blocked out of motor function, denied all but the visual feed from our eyes… I was forced to watch, a silently screaming witness whom no one knew was there.

The Machine would never allow me to tell of its presence… nor would it allow that anyone knew what it had done to me. When the last robot fell to the ground, disabled and useless, there remained only one living warrior to stand from cover and turn to look my way. I saw him open his mandibles in formation of a word, and I even heard the first phonetic sound escape him. Barely had it, before the Machine shot him in the head, the plasma vaporizing a gaping wound through his long skull and killing him instantly.

Satisfied there were no more 'threats', the Machine lowered our DER, and looked around for the Demon. I hoped she was far from here, but when she appeared anyway, I felt heartened for it. I did not want to be alone, trapped inside my own body with the likes of this Machine. I did not need her to be in danger needlessly, least of all from my own treacherous hands, yet I also did not want to have to face this travesty by myself.

I was… weak.

I saw her look at the carnage, saw her nudge a few of the warriors with a boot, but though I knew she saw plasma wounds on several of them, she did not turn to me, and did not comment about it. She just turned past me and walked, heading for the general direction the Machine had pointed earlier that would take her to the mountains. As I curled in the back of my own mind and tried not to look out anymore, I felt the Machine turn us around, and set off after her, following as always.

I would either become very broken and useless before this was over, or very bitter and savage… I hoped it was the latter, as that would better enable me to destroy the honorless cur before I took my own breath.

The line of reasoning helped to stabilize my condition, and I knew that I just might get my wish. I was devastated, yes… but I had something to live for. Something I would not mind dying for.

I am stronger than the Machine gives me credit for.

.

**FLINT-093**

I had gotten so badly turned around in my retreat that I knew for damn sure (without even needing to ask) that I was most definitely not alone in the woods anymore. And I was less certain that the rifles going off had anything at all to do with Tori. You might say that one thing that clued me in was the soft rattling burp of an SMG… or, rather, several of them.

Tori was not equipped with one of those, nor was she with anything standard issue other than the magnum. Our MA6C battle rifles were specially crafted by this one tech back at Command HQ that I had talked to, and no Marine ever born would be brave enough to pick one up and try to shoot it. The caliber is normal enough for standard battle gear, but the gun itself is unreasonably heavy and ridiculously long and deep for a standard sized human guy to heft around.

It'd be a little like giving the smallest kid in the squad the SAW and expecting him to be able to shoot the damn thing… the gun would knock him flat on his ass after the fourth round was out. Said fourth round would also likely have been aimed sky-high, at that.

So being a bigger gun, made for a bigger guy (points at self), it tends to pack a bit more of a punch than standard issue. It also does not sound one bit like the standard issue MA series I _had_ been using, before I'd gotten to talk to said tech; the MA5B. They were great guns, had more focus and more punch than the assault rifles we'd been given before the MA series came out, but I had always been frustrated with their stubbiness compared to my arms.

Which is why I really, _really_ like that guy I'd talked to back at CHQ… great guy. Hope he gets a medal or something.

So that was mainly how I knew what I was hearing was not Tori being liberal. Rather, it sounded more like a shitload of guys, all shooting off at once… under the staccato of saucer-droids firing back, of course. There really is no bullet going to drown out the sound of a thirty-millimeter round going off. I trotted quickly up through the forest towards the sound until it had nearly quieted, and all I had to let myself know that the fight had been more than my imagination was the lingering echoes.

Reaching the site, the first thing I saw was my arc-puncher letting me know it was still online. I turned to see who was shooting at me, but I could tell by the backspray the rounds got turned into that it wasn't a saucer doing it.

"Hey." I protested, doing my level best to sound casual about it. The Marine looked harried, but he did lift his cheek off his gun and give me a puzzled look.

"Who's that?" He asked me.

I contemplated how to answer, since I had no idea how to get back out of the armor I had on in order to prove to him that I was, in fact, as Human as I claimed to be. Shrugging, I went with normal formal; "Spartan zero-nine-three, Chief Petty Officer. Any of your buddies left?"

He gave me an absolutely _priceless_ look. "Mjolnir armor looks like _that_?"

I couldn't help it… I laughed at him. "This isn't Mjolnir."

He spared a hand to scratch his scalp, tipping up his helmet in the process. "Oh."

"You alone?" I asked, again.

"No… or I wasn't fifteen seconds ago." He answered, half-turning to glance back through the mulched ferns. For their lack, the sightlines were better, but the trees, debarked as they had been, were no less transparent as they'd been before the firefight. "Gibbs? You still out there?"

A voice from the trees off to my right answered back, "Gibbs is down… that you, Hannady?"

"Yeah… guys, we got some backup."

"From where?" I saw another fellow pass between two of the trees some three trees back, picking his way across the heaps of mangled machinery and tangled fern leaves, tripping up a little on a head-sized bit of tree bark. He paused when he caught sight of me, though, and I saw him quirk an eyebrow. "Hannady, what the hell is that thing?"

I cast Hannady a look. "Does it really look that bad?"

He just laughed. "Yeah, kinda."

"Damn…" Sure was useful, though, even if it was ugly. I made a mental note to see if I couldn't find something to get a good reflection of myself out of before I wound up destroying this thing… I wanted rather badly to know what I looked like, as I really honestly had no clue. Being shot at straight off the introductory by a Marine only doubled that itch.

The others soon gathered in, though, and I saw several of them were splashed with comrade's blood. None were injured – I figured that if any were, though, they'd have died of the wounds soon after infliction. Still, out of any kind of given military grouping, that still left me with about four guys.

And you do not send a measly fire team into a hot zone like this one. I sighed. "Any of you boys seen one-three-eight around?"

Hannady took a guess; "He another Spartan? Is he in Mjolnir?"

I pondered that for a moment, then wondered if it were possible to change the radio channel in my helmet or not. "Yeah, should be." Tori would be tickled to be referred to as a guy, though. Honestly, it wouldn't be the first time. I never understood the blind spot, but a lot of standard UNSC personnel have difficulty telling if a battle-dressed Spartan is a girl or not.

I always could… but then, I'd known the lot of them since before Mjolnir got developed, so that might be a bias of mine. I don't know.

Heads shook all around. I grumbled to myself for a moment, annoyed. "How'd you lot get here, anyway?"

"Caught a ride on a Pelican, down out of the UNSC _Tickets For Two,_ sir." Hannady answered. "I saw a report saying you and your… missing?… friend were supposed to have arrived here two days ago."

I balked. "Two days? It's only been a few hours!" And me without a mission clock to be able to confirm… now, I can estimate, and I can get real close. But even I am not immune to disorientation. I can get all confused almost as easily as the next guy. But still… being told that I'd been aground for two whole days just felt all kinds of wrong. For one thing, unless both sunsets had happened while I was down in the starship, and time had slowed to a crawl for me while continuing on as normal aboveground, that certainly could not possibly be the case.

But then… this whole freakish planet was one giant slipspace engine, so there's that.

"When did you arrive, then, Chief?" Hannady asked.

I could only shake my head. "I don't know… it's been a hell of a day since we got down, but… I really doubt it's been two days."

The Marines seemed to confer about that. Nobody seemed to have any kind of real helpful commentary, though. Hannady soon looked back at me.

It was good enough timing for me, though – I had a couple of questions. "I've been hearing a whole lot of shooting wars going on ever since I got back topside… is that mess you guys, stirring things up with those droids?"

"Some of it is." Hannady told me. "We got reports of Brutes in the area, and we've found some of their bodies. No live ones. The Elites are also here, they arrived almost an hour after we did. Might see some of their guys running around, shooting down saucers."

I frowned. "I was told there was no one in the area, which is why I got sent here in the first place."

"You _were_." Hannady argued. "Like I said, it's been two damn days!"

I waved a hand at him. "Calm down, calm down. This isn't making any sense." And really, it wasn't… there are certain nuances to being mortal that simply cannot pause for that long. Being sleep deprived and a little hungry, for one thing… needing to piss, for another. But if the planet was being weird about its timeframe, that didn't seem too far fetched considering what all else I had learned thus far.

If it was a slipspace assembly that somehow attracted people to come and crash some of their technology onto the surface, thus making a kind of half-broken-up collection of eons of stuff… I suppose I could believe that, too. Which might, in turn, explain why there was a war going on between the two kinds of robot. They'd been collected here, and had never really liked one another.

But that's a question for the monitor I'd found, and I nolonger had the connection to that place. So scratch that. Right then, I had better things to do with my time. Like… find Tori, and make sure she wasn't going to make some stupid mistake with a whole hell of a lot too much ordinance on a pair of relatively thin, flimsy doors.

Doors I was nolonger trapped on the other side of, too.

Okay, so it wasn't much of a plan. But my first gut instinct about this place remained. So I decided to see about making it come into play; the whole time-continuum thing only made it worse.

Looking at Hannady, I said, "You call for evac and get the hell off the surface. Try not to fall into orbit, either. See about getting your Captain to tell the Elites to do the same. I'm going to go find one-three-eight, and as soon as I do, we'll join you. Got that?"

"Sounds like a plan… even if you're not who you say you are… sir." Hannady ventured.

"At least there's _that_." I grumbled at him, before turning and marching off in a new direction. On my way out, I heard him saying agreeable things into the radio, so I felt better about myself just a little. Even if I looked like a two-legged droid, he couldn't deny I had some good sense.

.

**TORI-138**

In the span of about fifteen minutes I found myself in the middle of a rash of fighting all over again. It wasn't hard – fights were springing up all over the damn place now we had company. Saucers and teardrops alike were charging in full-speed to challenge these invaders. We found great swaths of dead, long, sometimes burning heaps of wreckage, and on occasion, one or two still living or operational.

Anuna shot at them all.

I was beginning to think his little plasma rifle would never run out of ammunition when I finally caught him dropping the damn thing (god only knows if it was the first time or not) and picking up a new one off someone else's body.

For the ones too far gone to be helped, I couldn't really complain. But I knew I was only condoning a bad habit of his and I half wondered if he hadn't been sentenced to this world as punishment for just that. He'd shoot at _anything_, and he usually killed it. When we ran into the backside of another fight, this one over some dead Brutes but currently entertaining several Elites and some Marines who were trying really hard to help out, I felt half inclined to walk the other way.

More because Anuna follows me, than because I felt my aid wouldn't merit much. In fact, quite the opposite was true. I had gotten really good at taking droids down out of the air. But the fact of the matter remained, I was the only thing Anuna would _not_ shoot at, or try to maim or otherwise kill. And he, conversely, was all I had to point me in the right direction. I have no sense for direction, and what with everything looking painfully alike in a forest like this one, there was no way I'd ever live long enough to find my own way out of it.

But with the rate of war building up, and our company growing in assault size, I knew that that tactic would not last me very long. I actually got to see a pair of Pelicans drop into one of the clearings, and they picked up everybody. Elites, humans. All jumped aboard and were whisked away, bleeding ammunition out the backs and filling the blood trays with brass. That was good… they didn't need to be here and I was glad to see them smart enough to be leaving. But I still couldn't find the damn mountains, nor the sloop Flint had parked in them, and I knew I did not want to sit on this world until nightfall.

God only knows what happens here after the sun goes down!

It had begun to get dim between the trees, so I knew I didn't have a whole lot of time left for that thought. Still, it wasn't dusk quite yet and there remained a few hours left to get to the sloop and get the hell out of here. I was still debating on what to do with Anuna once I got that far – to the sloop, I mean – because taking him to places where he might prove a hazard to others just didn't seem fair to those others.

Droids were everywhere, now, though, and we both would shoot as we moved, sometimes walking, sometimes trotting. Where before they had been sporadic, and were more liable to pounce with surprise, now they simply filled the forest, and were busily making all kinds of fresh scars on the trees that Flint and I had seen coming in.

Poor trees. They really did deserve a kinder ecosystem than this.

I didn't get to see the clearing up ahead until I had plunged right into it, but while I could see droids zipping by through the trees across the depth of it, none paused to consider us. I looked around once, rather expecting to see some familiar things, but I saw nothing I recognized from any earlier encounter. Indeed, if I ever saw the same clearing twice, it would entirely be the fault of my genocidal guide, and none of my own. He hesitated at the edge, but followed me out across the mossy, open ground anyway.

"I don't suppose you know what the hell is going on, huh?" I ventured.

"It's always been this way." Anuna answered, seeming entirely nonchalant. I wondered at his answer, and at his tone, but I wasn't sure what to make of it… surely the Brutes, Elites, and the UNSC didn't _always_ fight over this planet against a pair of equally self-hostile droid models, did they? Maybe he wasn't talking about us meatbags, though. It had actually looked like the droids fought continuously when we'd started arriving.

I stepped briskly across the cleared area, wondering if there was another dissolution reservoir underneath me. "What's under this clearing?"

"Likely another extension of the Mass Transmitter."

I gave a mental hiccup. That rather made it sound like he'd been here a while. Surely the Elite cruiser shot down over this place had not been here to pick him up! What were the odds of someone getting a cry for evac out with a war like this going on? Especially given that he'd not had a gun when I'd found him! I paused my walk, and turned to see him fully. "What's a Mass Transmitter?"

"It was used in place of slipspace technology to transport starships between relay points, much in the same way matter streams were used to transport individuals and items from planetary surfaces into orbital stations during the same era." Anuna answered, giving me a blank look. Weird. He sounded a little like a dumb AI, prattling off data as if I'd asked that kind of question.

I frowned at him for several long moments, trying to figure out what was going on behind those black eyes embedded in his head. At times he seemed almost human, and then he'd be alien to me, but in an understandably organic way. And then there were times like now… times when he seemed _robotic_ in nature, as if his brain were filled with transmitters, chips and wires, rather than synapses. I almost wanted to suspect he was one of the robots, parading around as a fleshy thing just to see if he could get away with it.

The sad truth was, though… I did not know him from any point in the past, and thus could not justifiably conjure any way to catch him in a lie. Nor could I ask him anything relevant to make him need to lie. I was stuck with baseless suspicions. Hell, for all I know, this is just exactly why I never really heard any stories about him from Flint – there's nothing worth the tell!

But yeesh… if this is what all Elites are like…

I turned back around, shaking my head and feeling at a loss, and made my way to the next treeline where I could go through and hope to find some rocks. It was a big flatland, covered in huge trees, but I was sick of it already. I missed the hilly, cliffs-and-bluffs terrain of the world where I'd met Andy.

Man… I even missed Andy, and I didn't know him, either!

I got into the trees again, and stepped softly for a while to tell where all the noise I was hearing was coming from. Gauging point of origin is not hard, if there is little enough echoing going on. Despite the kind of forest I was in, there was surprisingly little echo. Only certain sounds would resonate.

Which was odd.

But under the annoying buzzing whine of the saucer-droids, and past the soft bleating hum of the teardrop droids, and through the staccato rattle of distant Marine counter-fire, I could hear something else. Something I found a little odd. There was a tiny bit of Phantom heartbeat, and some throbbing Pelican engine noise thrown in there, as well as the occasional screaming or what-have-you. But this noise was new. I did not have a category for it.

It went kind of like this;

_Tump-tump-tump-tump-WHAM-tump-tump-tump-tump-WHAM._

Like I said… I have no idea what that was.

Until I saw it.

.

**ANUNA-02**

I felt our head turn, and I heard a strange new sound. The sound of soil compacting suddenly and forcefully under something very heavy. The sound of bark splintering brutally under glancing, forceful impact. So I let myself look, let myself see again through the Machine's glancing look.

I did not understand what I was seeing when I saw it first, although despite the oddness of the articulating armor plating the first thing to pop to mind was _human_. The Machine, however, took great exception to the sight of the forbidding gray exoskeletal armor. Flashes of alarm and panic raced down through my mind, but they were not mine. Here was something the Machine had not seen nor needed to deal with in a long time, and it had thought that fight done with.

It had a name for them, but while it was hopelessly alien to me, it sounded painfully similar to my own old allegiance – _Covenant_. Whatever had worn that armor had been a member of a multi-race pact, and some of them had come here at some point in the distant past and made a large scar on the world doing it. Large enough, in fact, to shiver my otherwise unshakeable Machine captor.

I smiled at it, cheering it on as it came closer.

And closer.

And… wait.

I recognized that shape. I recognized that stance. I even recognized that _motion_. No Human could ever quite make a suitable mockery of that memory I had, no one but the original. Yes! Haha! I have no idea where he had gotten the luck to get that outfit, but it looked better than what I had on.

The Machine was so back on its heels that it did not have the processes in place to stop me when I cheered aloud, lurching forward in joyous greeting. "Zelis!"

The approaching form slammed to a dead halt before us, and its gaze swung to me. "Huh?" Came out.

I recognized the voice, too. Ha! I was good enough to know my old friend when I saw him, even when he wore a cunning disguise. "Zelis!" I said, again, feeling just a tad less jovial now the shock of recognition was past. "You live!"

"To my knowledge, the last time anyone mistook me for anything less was back when G'wi was still wearing bright, obvious, shoot-me yellow." He answered, sounding demure. Casting a glance over at the female Demon, he added, "Tori?" Well! He was certainly the same old 'Zelis I had always known… permanently sarcastic, with a touch of pessimism on the side.

Oh… I had not thought to ask what her name was. I too looked over at her, to find she seemed to go from puzzled and confused to blankly shocked. It is hard to gauge expression through such concealing outfits as the Demon creed wear, but after a while, it is easy enough to recognize. She stammered for a moment, obviously caught off her guard.

"Well, at least we're all here." 'Zelis decided. "It's time to go. I told the others to retreat, and hopefully they'll listen if they're smart."

"… Flint?" Tori asked.

"What?" He answered.

I looked from one to the other, the Machine slowly recovering its wits and deciding what to do. Evidently, it had decided that my reaction meant that 'Zelis was an ally, and it was processing this with much relief that I did not fully understand. If half of what it was considering about him were true, though, then I wanted very, very badly just to blurt to him my issues, and have him assist me with the correcting of it all.

Surely, surely, he would be able to assist, if the Machine so feared what he wore!

"He told me you dropped into a dissolution reservoir, and that you'd _died_." The female said.

Ouch… I hate moments of truth like this, especially when it was not I who caused the terrible lie to emit from my mouth.

I got a ponderous-seeming look from 'Zelis, but he just looked back at Tori and shrugged. "Well, it dissolved my armor, but it didn't do anything to _me_."

For the longest moment I thought I might see the female throw herself at him… to embrace? Who knows. But ultimately she relaxed her stance to straighten from her forward-leaning inclinations, and did not move from where she stood. I had a distinct feeling that my presence was what changed her decisions, but I was a little disappointed. I had questions, and I did not feel permissibly situated to ask them.

Still… if grumpy old 'Zelis had found himself a mate… that was almost as relieving as it was hilarious. I would have wanted to tell G'wi about it had I not been so focused upon the relief of my own shame. I did not necessarily expect to survive it, and therefore could spread no humor to anyone.

I was about to ask a query regarding 'Zelis's plans to depart, and pondering how to lure him instead back to the place of my imprisonment, augmentation, and subsequent shame, when the thunderous background noise came up to greet us all from 'Zelis's left flank.

Through the trees rushed a harried human, ducking large rounds from a disk-shaped robot, and before I could twitch to resist, the Machine had yanked the motor functions of my body from me and shoved me down, bringing up our DER and blasting both man and machine to smaller, more manageable bits. The Machine did not have time to compensate when I saw 'Zelis take major exception to that action, however, even when Tori leapt between us and I landed on the ferns alone.

"Stop!" She screamed, shoving him back. It took massive effort, I saw… interesting. I felt almost like a mockery of my Machine counterpart, then, eager to absorb information on 'Zelisee's armor in much the same way the Machine had been, to absorb information about myself and the female Demon.

'Zelis was not to be easily dissuaded, though, and I saw him shove her aside effortlessly, but with enough power to stagger her. "He killed that Marine, Tori."

She returned from his push, and shoved him back anyway. "Maybe he _missed_! He's your friend!"

The Machine sat us up, and gathered our legs beneath us to rise. I could feel the withering properties of 'Zelisee's glare on our skin, and I wanted to bow my head in shame… but the Machine only lifted it for me, seeming arrogant and challenging, daring the legendary warrior to fight us. It did not understand the merit behind why I called him 'Zelis, and Tori called him Flint. There was a _reason_ my people had given him a warrior's name. Why _I_ had given him a warrior's name…

"Anuna does not miss." I heard him say. Oh! How flattering a thing to proclaim over one he wanted so badly to smite down for that sin. I felt warmed inside, to know he thought so well of me, despite the situation that had caused such a comment to spring from him.

In a bold display of disrespect and callous accusation, I saw the female stab a finger at 'Zelis. "He's saved my skin twice over just since I found him, and he's kept me from getting hopelessly lost. I'm not going to stand here and just watch while you turn him to mulch!"

_Ouch_, a spitfire female indeed! Perhaps there are facets to the legendary 'Zelis that I had not been privy to… heh… indeed, rare are the warriors who choose females for themselves that (can or cannot immaterial) are willing to try to kick their asses. If 'Zelis was just such a warrior… I would never have guessed it!

I saw him studying her, as if warring within himself for a way to get around her without pushing her away. I wished he would just get it overwith… the Machine was antsy, and felt certain my initial greeting had been a ploy to disarm it so that 'Zelis would get close enough to kill us. At any moment, it was going to tear loose, and then I would be forced to fight a good friend to the death… perhaps for little more merit than the amusement of the Machine that held me captive.

I saw his broad shoulders sink just a little. "I can't let this slide, Tori."

She clutched her human rifle as if she meant to aim it at him and shoot it, all fired up and willing to argue until she ran out of breath.

The Machine hesitated… an external defender? Would it be made to watch these two combat, before ever being asked to participate? Personally, I hoped not. They seemed a decent pair, even if there seemed to be some tension between them. 'Zelis had strange tastes, but a female would do him good. This particular female seemed right up his alley in some ways… he hated useless people and having a mate as capable of war as he seemed appropriate. How in the world he had convinced her to fight at his side at all was a conversation I had missed… and would very much like to hear reiterated, some day! Obviously, it had not been convincing enough… she looked almost willing to slay him on the spot for an affront against me that he had yet to commit.

Or perhaps that had been half the point. Someone to keep him in line.

But had I been able, I would have sided with 'Zelis. I _wanted_ him to kill me! I wanted him to kill the Machine, and I needed his friendship to grant me that reprieve. I needed this to end. Of all that I had known in the past, 'Zelisee was the lone soul whom I believed capable of delivery.

The argument seemed in slow-motion, but it went back and forth and back and forth several times over before finally, the female drew herself up, and made her case. "If you kill him… I will never forgive you."

'Zelis's response was both damning and heartening at once. "Some things cannot be helped."

I felt my hearts wrench in sympathetic pity for him when she turned on a heel and walked away from him… this would be a hard match for him to win. Not because of my augmentations, or because the Machine would be getting any kind of military combat aid out of me… but because his mate had turned her back on him because of this. I wanted badly more now than ever before to be able to scream it out, confess my shame, to reconcile them, and make her understand. 'Zelisee saw it. He understood, perhaps better than he realized. But why could not she too?

The Machine didn't wait. At the precise instant that it deemed its external defensive perimeter gone, it coiled us and launched in attack at 'Zelisee. I did not want to attack him so outright… but at least I would at last be able to see this to its grisly end and be done with it. If there was one thing I believed with all my hearts, it was that nothing, not even this evil, shameless Machine, could ever bring him down.

.

**FLINT-093**

Tori was a mess I knew I'd never figure out. But I swear, I thought I'd known who and what Anuna was. What got me was not the fact that he had murdered the Marine right in front of me, nor that Tori had defended him… or the somewhat hurtful part where she'd declared she'd always hold it against me forevermore if I won the fight I was about to pick…

It was the part where I hadn't gotten to so much as finish watching her stalk off. Anuna hit me like nine tons of bricks, attacking blatantly and savagely. I recognized none of his former particulars, none of the typical Elite mannerisms used during hand-to-hand combat sessions.

There was no background itch for the lack of an energy sword in his grasp, which I had found was true for almost _every_ Elite I had seen fight. Crafted of energy or not, really, they really do love their knives.

There had been days when I had felt more kinship with the splitlips than with my fellow man, and yet there was _nothing_ familiar about the creature I now tangled with. He was alien all over again. Perhaps there was something I had missed, some bit of his recent history between Delta Halo and now that had changed him, embittered him.

Made him mad at me?

We struck ground at the bottom of the starting arc and he started hammering my exo-plating with both fists as if he had some personal vendetta to satisfy against my personal self. I don't recall ever making him mad, least of all _that_ mad. But his mandibles had crooked into that signature Elite snarl, and I knew I was in for more than a dance of wits.

He wanted to tear me apart… and he wasn't above cheating to do it. That alone made him all the more alien to me. What had happened to the guy?

I got an elbow between us and knocked him in the base of the jaw, sending his balance on me wide enough to lift him off and kick him aside. I was not about to be pounded into a shallow grave (more due to the soil qualities than because he was being particularly lethal right now) without first being deceased. He was barely off before he rebounded and came back to me, knocking a big face-sized fist off my visor and sending an alarming split snapping across from one side to the next.

My HUD didn't flicker, didn't even blink, but while I was not concerned about atmospheric pressure, that impact was still alarming. It had lifted my chin a little, but the nature of the armor I wore kept it from snapping my neck. I balanced into a brace and hit low, pounding my right into where I hoped the Elites kept their kidneys, sending my less-than-optimal left upwards to thread aside his own attacking strike.

He didn't even flinch. Damn, no kidneys.

Anuna got around my threading left and socked me center-of-mass, causing both sides of that fist to get arc-punched to hell and gone. He recoiled, howling, but he left himself wide open so I brought both fists up fast and hard (and hopefully a little accelerated) under his head aimed at his throat. Somehow, he snapped out of the way and I clipped the underside of his mouth instead, shattering out the teeth he had there. I felt the very end of his skull cave slightly, but honestly, it truly felt more like a bend than a break.

Like I had struck my fist into a metal plate.

When he turned back to respond to that, he had an upturned snout look on him, and when he reeled back the flesh on his face to snarl at me again, it made it look all the worse. But nothing about it resembled a broken face in the least.

What the _hell_.

We traded hard blows for several long seconds, him hitting me and me hitting him, and sometimes blocking one another, until he managed to catch a square strike that actually landed and earned me a satisfyingly choked sound out of him. Once he had me by that arm, though, he just braced his other under that elbow and lifted. I knew he was aiming for a tree trunk with me, but I brought up my legs anyway and curled my spine so I planted both boots in his chest with as much power as I had to offer, braced against his grasp on my arm.

When I came free, I tumbled once over my own head, and somehow got back balanced on my feet again. I suspected the suit was at fault for that, because barely had I gotten upright than Anuna was on me again, knocking me back and away into the ferns. He smashed his fist into my faceplate again, and the first crack branched. So I stuck my fist into his face again, jerking his head back and up. When he brought it back down – which I was counting on – I stuck my other fist across the side where his eye socket was, and slugged him right off the top of me.

Again… felt him bend. Dented, like metal.

I stuck a knee out and got rolled mostly upright before he came back, so I rolled my shoulders to bring my guns up, and closed my fists to fire them. Ammunition seared into him at point-blank, tossing him back and slamming him into a tree. I admit it rather hurt to see him like this… Anuna had been good to me. Needing to put him down was harsh.

Having to make a concerted effort in order to do so was beginning to wear on me. Why he'd turned on me like he had, I felt I would never know. But after today… I almost didn't care. Tori'd been her own brand of bother, but she'd kept me sane. And she could be… pleasant… when she tried. Anuna had called me brother once. Both had turned on me.

He didn't even have the excuse of being a Flood-form… nor being bloody infected, like I was! He came back down off that tree like a thing possessed, and rammed into me with a mighty wallop that felt like it should have come off the leading end of a diving Phantom. He hit me _hard_, so hard that I felt it badly enough to be winded, even through my new armor. The arc-punch slapped him off of me, but I was still left gasping, and for it he got in a free slug. He looked bent up and burnt and I could tell I was shattering his own armor for him, but I hadn't had the time or ability to tell what he'd done to my own hide thus far.

I knew it couldn't be good.

I turned him halfway around with my next hit, spinning as much of the suit's do-it-for-me as I could into that hit. If I was going to win… shit, I hadn't realized Anuna was built like a damn dreadnaught!! I certainly felt outmatched, and I hadn't even been fighting him for longer than a minute and a half yet. I hammered him through the minute opening he offered, sloppily, and pounded him back for a brief respite. When he'd finally gotten enough shit pounded out of him to stagger back a step or two, I sent in the uppercut I'd been saving and knocked him on his ass with a galloping headache for his trouble.

I've never liked traitors… done worse to Innies in the past. But Anuna wasn't an Innie. And what he'd betrayed was not my chain of command. It was a lot closer to home than that. Hurting him was almost as hard as letting him get away with it.

.

**TORI-138**

I found the sloop.

I have no idea how.

But I found the sloop, and I got across the open expanse of rocky crags and tumbled boulders, and I made it to the hull and I got it open. Once inside, I damn near broke the hatchkey making it pull closed again. I knew I needed to be nicer to the equipment but I was in such a tizzy I couldn't think straight anymore.

How could it have come to this?

Flint was not wrong, and I knew he wasn't, but as much as I knew that I should have done what he was doing now a while back… it didn't help the way I felt. I had, I suppose, allowed the splitlip to endear himself to me. Save my ass from certain death a couple times and that'd happen for anyone, but this was just a little different.

Anuna was a strange cookie, and certainly a hard soul to like. But in the end, I had known he'd been there for Flint when he in turn had needed backup. Had needed a friend. Had been unable to pick himself up. He'd done no less for me, and I had been gracious enough about it to only fuss, and not punish.

Flint was not as forgiving as I had come to assume… perhaps it was just me? Had I somehow earned some version of favor to be treated marginally kinder than all else? All I knew right then was how much I'd just wounded my own self. What quality my abandonment had had on Flint… I don't know. Likely, if I ever saw him again, he would never tell me.

Flint doesn't tell stories.

But I had been on an emotional rollercoaster for a long time, and I was officially exhausted. Spending a while angry with him, then suffering his loss, and believing him dead and gone… and when he turned back up again only to need to fight anew when all I had wanted to do was wrap myself around him and never let go…

It was just too much.

Initially I had planned to fire up the bird and fly away and never look back.

What actually happened was I hit the rack and collapsed there, up to my neck in my armor and my helmet rolling upside down across the floor, my face tucked into the cold, unforgiving steel around my arms.

I fought back the tears until I felt a soft weight strike the small of my back, and settle there. When I heard the sympathetic purr, I could bear it no more.

Even if I did see him again… the odds of _him_ forgiving _me_ were dismal.

And I had done it to myself.


	7. Somehow Still Friends

**7: Somehow Still Friends**

**ANUNA-02**

I was impressed. Pained, yes. The Machine felt some of it, I was sure, but I was as finely attuned to my old nerves as ever. When Flint struck me, I felt it, and I wanted to double over in unquestionable agony. He was doing a fine job of breaking me in half, augmented and super-powered or not. My faith was not in vain, it seemed, even as I choked and gasped, fighting down my sense of self-preservation.

I _wanted_ this… wanted to die. That 'Zelis would grant me a warrior's end was more than I deserved. I just wished I could fight the Machine down, too, and force it to stop fighting back. It got some nasty hits back on 'Zelis, in turn, and I was forced to watch as we slugged him back, knocked him down, threw him aside.

The Machine was holding nothing back, as terrified of 'Zelis' potential as I was assured of it. But the Machine did not know how to fight like a bipedal two-armed organic creature, and it was sloppy in its mechanical brutality. It fought, I understood, like a Machine. Everything was broken up, a little angular, and hopeless. There was no finesse, no style, no grace at all.

If it understood the depth of its flaw, it did not show. 'Zelisee seemed no less his old self, breaking me apart a little at a time, throwing aside the Machine's meager defenses and striking through them as if they did not exist. I felt it when the armor over my front finally could take no more and the metal shattered apart like tough glass. Shrapnel exploded from the fist he embedded in my chest, and it threw me down. The Machine floundered, unable to fathom that if it just tossed our legs over our head, we could ride our falling momentum and be back on our hooves. No grace.

I did not share, and held in my scream when 'Zelis came after us and lifted us bodily off the mossy ground with the most savage kick I had ever endured. I felt as if he might have taken a Scarab leg to effect the strike, but it tossed us into a roll so we hit face-down, and the Machine just shrugged off the nervous reports and stood us back up. We charged back after him, the Machine angry that its new toy was not good enough to win against a combination of my old friend and its old nightmare. Indeed, I found it a suitable combination.

When we hit, the sparks of jumping electric charge on his combat skin reached back and smashed into our fists, searing off flesh and roasting agonizing heat down through our bones. But impact had damaged the outer layer of his armor, and our next hit, with our other fist, sent a terrible looking crack snaking up across his chest to end at the shoulder I knew he favored. He staggered back, knocking against a tree for a heartbeat before peeling away from it so we smashed bark instead of his face in our pursuit. Rounding on him, he met us with a stiff blow that bashed our head off that same tree we had just debarked, and while it made my marbles roll dizzily, the Machine just reset, blinked the fuzz out of our eyes, and returned as if unhurt.

'Zelis was killing me, and had the Machine not been in control, I would have dropped in a useless heap several punishing blows ago. He got us by the head, and brought us down over a rising knee, smashing our throat across it with enough force to drop even the Machine to our knees. We gagged there for half a second before 'Zelis got a boot under our mandibles and flipped us over ourselves again.

By the time we made impact, the Machine had gotten my throat open again, and we could breathe. Rising, we saw he had brought those shoulder-mounted mini cannons out again, but the Machine just charged through the terrible hail and tore one of them right off of him. Somewhere behind us, I could just hear that familiar soft hum of an approaching teardrop. Doubtless the sound of our battle was attracting attention… but the last thing I wanted was for 'Zelis to be felled by a robot when I needed him to finish me… to finish the Machine.

My elbow came up and back, and knocked him in the side of the head, slugging him over sideways back into that same tree from a moment ago. He rattled against it for a moment, but before he could come back with anything, the Machine wound up as much energy as our augmented muscles could contain and smashed the bones in my left hand breaking through the broken armor over his chest. Several fragments lanced away as glistening, steel-colored bone shards came flying out the arc-burned hole in that wrist. The Machine did not care if it broke me to bits killing 'Zelis… and we sent the shattered end of that arm back in for another punch, this time with no blunting end (a hand) on the tip.

I screamed in protest when I felt ribs snap.

_No!_ 'Zelisee could not lose! I could not bear such an end!

We pounded mercilessly until he could take no more of our abuse and caught the side of my face in his hand, crushing both mandibles on that side down into one another as he yanked me over and down, unbalancing me. I would have laid down willingly, much of my body throbbing and in broken agony, but the Machine was not done with me yet.

'Zelisee raised his other hand and brought it down over my head, lifting with his grasping hand as he did so. The punishing impact sent shudders of dizzy fatality all down my frame, letting me know that his head-crushing tactic was about to earn him the victory despite the Machine's desperation.

I could never bite him with his fist crushing my mandibles, anyway. But the Machine did not want us to lose – did not want me to die. I begged for it to give up, but it would not listen – if anything, it raged all the more against my counsel. My spine arched, and the Machine snapped us out of 'Zelis's grasp directly after the third crushing strike. We staggered backwards a few steps, but when he came off the tree and came after us, moving haltingly but no less quick, the Machine caught him by his leading fist and spun us around, hauling up and then back down as he threw the hapless human right into the tree opposite the one he had been up against a moment before. I saw him flip fully over, crashing into the wooden pillar and shaking leaves loose some five hundred feet above us.

I railed against the Machine, desperate to make it let go of me. I did not want it to win, and certainly I did not want to be forced to watch as I was made to kill him. This was not what I had wanted! 'Zelis sagged where he landed, obviously wheezing. The Machine stalked after him, intending to finish it.

We grabbed him by the lip of his helmet and brought our broken, ruined hand down across it, using the busted end of that arm to smash the helmet from around his head. Bringing him up from the ground I saw his favored arm hung entirely limp – but that did not stop him from catching me by my mandibles again (was that a favorite latching point, or something?) and twisting us around to the side. Once we were swayed over and off our balance again, he pushed himself up and stomped down hard sideways across our leading knee.

The joint snapped instantly, and we both went down. 'Zelis came down on top of us, though, and with his good arm he bludgeoned our head until surely he had broken the flesh and could see the steel glinting out at him from under the blood. He did not seem to care if he did… but though blinded now in one eye, the Machine still had a few tricks to employ. First it took our arms and caught him by his remaining good arm, and rolled us out from under him. When he tried to kick us off of him, the Machine rotated us out, and using my destroyed hand, stabbed him through the hole in his armor. My bones splintered as they parted metal, the armor apparently better made than they. But when the muscle tissues of that plunging arm met the broken ribs I had felt cave earlier, they were only stripped away from my bones, clawed back as if by some great mechanical claw.

'Zelis has metal bones, too?

I felt the ground stir, and around us, trees began to sway, tipping precariously in both directions before finally, the first one collapsed. Wood screamed as it tore apart, fibers long and sharp shattering out in all directions as it came down. The other trees were too disturbed to stop it, and many of them collapsed in like manner around us.

One came down across us, and swept 'Zelis away so I could nolonger see him. I let out a long and mournful wail, aware that while I would not survive my encounter, I had struck an equally condemning blow. In all my years as a warrior, I had never once met a human capable of surviving having their middle perforated. It was, much like my own people, a tender area filled with many important organs.

Even as much as I had wished it would not be so, I knew the Machine had killed him… it had won. We tumbled down into the bottom of what I suppose had once been a shuttle bay along with the dirt and settling wood fragments, but I did not wish to know what happened next.

.

**FLINT-093**

When I finally finished tumbling, another swath of wood came and shoveled itself right into me, peeling up my broken alien armor and breaking it away, sending the mangled pieces clawed off of me away to hide them under heaps of splinters and moss.

At first I lay where I'd been tossed, aware I was more beaten than I'd ever before been in my whole life. My bum shoulder had shattered, tearing away, and I knew at least one of the bones in that forearm had snapped as well. I didn't know if there remained a single whole rib on my right side anymore, either… but I did know that I had not been left to poke myself full of holes on my own with the shards. Anuna had used the broken ends of his own ulna and radius to make sure I had holes aplenty in there.

Every breath hurt like plasma fire, and while I hadn't the capacity to choke yet, I could literally feel the blood racing up my bronchial tubes. If the thing was just that broken or if that was just how it came off I have no idea… but when I pushed on the lip of my shattered helmet, it lifted free of the jawline seal. When it was off, I managed to get most of the glass fragments off my face, but I knew it was a shredded mess.

So much for not having marked my face with scars.

Still, if I lived long enough to scar over, I doubted I'd truly want to. But Anuna was still out there, and I didn't need him ambushing me like the damn robot he was pretending to be. He'd put up a good act, too.

I rolled over, getting my ruined arm out from under me, and shoved up on my good elbow. Getting my legs beneath me, I pushed into a seated position, looking around at the settling timbers. I was now in an enormous hole in the ground, some fifty or so feet below the old ground level. Funny… I hadn't realized there were trapdoors in places other than the cleared areas. Perhaps this one was just embedded deeper, deep enough to support those massive trees atop it. At any rate, I didn't see any metal to suggest it was deep enough to contain all the dirt and wood it had just tried to swallow.

But despite the heaps and piles of wood spears gathered around me, I could almost tell where to look for Anuna. I wrapped my good arm around my wounded ribs, and with as much effort as I had left, I got to my feet one more time. My broken shoulder hurt, but not in the same way I was used to – it had my attention, but not all of it. I had gotten used to getting pain out of that joint, just not to this degree. It hurt when it dangled, but I was more concerned about the mulched ruin behind my broken ribs. Coming out over the top of the tallest heap of wood splinters bigger than a typical Pelican, I finally spotted him.

Damned if he didn't look like he was trying to get back up, shoving wood bits away and clawing at them. I set my jaw against the pain, and made my way across the gap. I was less than four strides from him when he finally turned his head, lifted to an elbow but no farther up, and looked dead at me.

I didn't wait for it – I just dropped to my knees, wrapped my good arm around that head and braced a knee into his shoulder. He clawed frantically at me for a split second, until I extended my torso and rolled against him, twisting too far for his flexibility to follow.

The sound I got when his motions went stiff and twitchy was not the crunch of dislocating bone, but the screech of scoring metal. Still, his arms fell limp to the mulched ground, and I knew he was finally dead.

I sat there like I was, on my knees, my good arm wrapped around his head, looking down at his frozen face. His skull had caved on one side, his teeth blunted inward at the front of his face, and the eye socket under the caved place nolonger contained an eye. But the other was intact, and still open, seeming to stare accusingly at me from within a lifeless face.

I couldn't breathe anymore, but I knew the pain in my chest was not because of my broken ribs.

I had torn him apart, smashing and crushing and breaking until at last, I had killed him. Anuna was dead, gone. Sitting there half-curled over his collapsed form at the bottom of a pit filled with broken trees and splintered branches, I was reminded of a certain Brute Chieftain and the fate he had dealt to a certain small child.

I had failed, in as much as this had been the sought end result, again.

I drew the body up closer, feeling lightheaded. My mouth had filled with blood, and I knew it was running down my chin, but I didn't, couldn't, care. What I now held was everything I had left, and I didn't feel there was anywhere else to be but right here.

He had called me brother.

.

**TORI-138**

Artemis looked sad. Looking down into those brilliant, liquid gold-on-green eyes, I felt I knew more about why than I fully deserved to. She wanted to know where her human was – cats adopt humans, not the other way around – and she seemed to understand that I, guilty as I felt, knew where he was.

Knew, it seemed, where he would never be again. She had been Grace's cat before, but though I had kept her for my own reasons, she had not become my cat. She was Flint's cat… and she missed him. Missed him as much as I did, but with much more innocence. She had not betrayed him, had not turned her back on him, had not walked away.

Had not been the one to condemn him to a fight that I had _seen_ he didn't start. Yes, he had argued for its occurrence. But I had seen the Elite start it. I had walked away anyway. I had left, but ever fiber in my being wanted to go back, make amends, perhaps separate the two if I possibly could.

Make them understand… if that was possible. But if either one were still alive at this point, I knew it was by far too late to go back, to try to affect anything now. It was too late to fix it, too late to seek absolution.

I had condemned my soul to a dark, forbidding place at the bottom of the deepest pit. I had thought that losing my friends at the asteroid had been rough… but I had not betrayed them, had not been the one to put them down. I had been trapped behind a sheet of plexi-steel, and made to watch as they were reduced to ash. It was where I had gathered the rage to be able to pull the trigger when I found Tam after the fact.

Now, it was I who stood in his shoes, and I found myself at very much the same fault. I had done as he would have, and now I found myself wallowing in my guilt and unable to fathom a way to fix any of it.

All the reports of Spartan and Elite hand-combat that I had read always put the Spartan in a bad place… it was why very few of anyone ever tried to pound an Elite into the floor. It was just too easy to lose. So, given the attitude of the Elite in question, I knew the odds of it being Flint to walk away from that fight were rather small.

Being a scientist, I could easily disassemble the situation and analyze it until I was blue in the face… but sitting there on the bed we had shared and petting the cat who refused to sit in my lap, I knew I had been wrong… and I had committed an unforgivable sin against him.

Against both of them.

I wanted to fly away, wanted to go up to the bridge, and fire up the engines. Flint _had_ said that being here was a bad idea. Time to leave, he'd said. But while I felt I had no one to wait for – if Anuna appeared at the airlock I would surely panic and fly away then – I still did not feel I had the strength to leave it that far behind.

If it was some lazy, half-hearted, meager attempt to regain some form of hope, it wasn't obvious enough for me to fully grasp. Lifting Artemis' front paws in a hand in an attempt to draw her near, I watched instead as she pulled her paws free and leapt down off the bed, meowing as she went down. Once on the floor, she raced away through he door and off down the hall, abandoning me in the same way I had done to Flint.

It hurt, but it was no less than I felt I deserved.

.

**ANUNA-01**

I felt as if I had been pitched down a long and dark tunnel to plummet freely to my death at the bottom. Impact woke me as if from a terrifying nightmare, and I surged against the glass as if a thing possessed. I slapped against it bodily at first, my eyes popping open wide as my face made contact with the smooth surface. I fumbled my arms for a moment, but when my elbow struck something behind me, I twisted on instinct away from it, gathering at the other end of the tube.

I felt my expression wither into horror at what I saw there – waving softly in the still, stale air inside the narrow tube, I saw the neural contact cables that had a moment ago stolen away all semblance of my life.

Had not I died? I recalled vividly the sight of 'Zelis, standing over me, bloody, wounded beyond all hope of recovery, and yet standing still. I remembered the feel of his hand closing over my cheek, his arm coiled around my head.

And I remembered the knee in my neck, and the sudden moment of absolute terror before he had jerked my neck apart. I had _died_. I was dead.

But then… how could I still be in this tube, facing down those cables swaying before me, breathing hard and still as nude as I had been when I had first arrived in this little chamber? Slowly, slowly, the truth trickled in. That form sent out across the forest… that was not _me_…

When the cables suddenly stiffened and lunged for me, I leapt away, kicking at them as I clawed for purchase against the smooth, cornerless surface surrounding me. I felt them bite into my unprotected shins, but I kicked them loose again and braced myself at opposite ends of the tube to wriggle my way up. I was not going to be made subject to that shame again! No way was I that weak.

Familiar hands reached out from the same arms I had come to know so well, and a body long and sinewy from battles and work that I felt at one with extended out behind my head. I was fragile, and as the brilliant violet blood poured down my clawed shins and across my hooves, I knew that I was _myself_ again.

I was _normal_. I had not, it seemed, been changed. I had been _downloaded_, not into an augment but into a construct, and when contact had broken with the construct, the Machine had been unable to hold me. Now I was free, I was going to escape. I hit the sphincter door at the top of the tube and shouldered into it, pushing with all my might until it buckled and bent.

I got a hand on the lip at its edge and hoisted myself up and out, into the dried dissolution reservoir above. Looking up, I saw the entrance doors were still open… I had only to make the fifteen-foot depth to the surface and I was free. Immediately I raced on the legs mother had borne me with to the nearest wall, and leapt to it to climb up to the lip of the open doors. When I got over that final edge, I stood up, and filled my lungs with clean air. I was _free_!

I leveled my gaze at the tortured trees around the clearing's edge, calculating almost before I was done celebrating. I ran my empty hands down my bare chest, just to feel my own skin again, pondering the data the Machine had unwittingly given me. I knew where I was… I knew where I had been… and I knew where I needed to go.

But I had to _hurry_.

Bracing against the turned soil under my hooves, I bent into a rushed run, pelting naked through the woods as quick as I could, hoping to pass any robots by without gathering their interest. The last thing I needed now was to be cut down shy of my reach for salvation, for absolution. I had a massive debt to repay, and I meant to repay it before it was too late to matter.

I saw a robot or two, but they looked more interested in the study of their fallen brethren than in seeking new prey to hunt. It felt so good to nolonger have the Machine in the back of my mind, controlling, punishing, dishonoring. I was free, and I was in complete control. Everything I did was by my own permission alone, and no one and nothing else held sway.

It was remarkably nice to run, without pursuit… but rather, with destination. The soil was especially soft and while it was good for running on barefooted, it was not especially good for making good time across. Every step slid a little, until after the twentieth step I felt sure I had lost a whole stride's worth of distance.

But I still hit the lip of the collapse in good time, and drew up before I pitched myself bodily down into the mess at the bottom. A single pause later and I knew just where to go, so I circled around to a propped branch and trotted quickly down the length to the bottom. The splintered wood bedding was squishy, flexing under my weight, but it had a coarse, roughened surface that stabbed mercilessly at the bottoms of my bare, unprotected hooves. I do not walk on hooves that a human would be familiar with, after all – and the part they call the 'frog' is a bit larger for me than for an Earth-animal.

I reached the place where the Machine's broken construct lay sprawled, soaked over in sticky red blood. At first I pondered that, having thought I had seen violet bodily fluids when I had broken the thing's hand on 'Zelis' chest. But when I knelt next to the pair and pulled the human back, I saw why it was all red, and there was no violet to be seen.

"Ah, brother… look at you." I lamented, cradling his limp form in my bare arms. "Come with me, now…" I began, tugging him away from the construct he had thought was me. It was touching, really, to see how he had mourned me even after my blatant betrayal, but that thing was not really me at all. "… I will take care of you."

I was sadly forced to tug him out of what remained of his ruined armor, alien as it was to me, before I could carry him out of the collapse in the ground. It weighed too much for me to carry, and I could not hardly move him at all while it clung to him. I felt frustrated for the waste and loss of time doing so, but trying to move him with it on would have been more still of a waste.

Lifting him out of it, I found the skinsuit to be covered in fractured contact points, each one of the little sensory disks not at all unlike those found under the combat skin of a Heavy Cruiser… to find them on a personal armor suit was novel indeed. I had to walk up the branch to make sure I did not over balance and tumble us both back to the bottom of the pit, but once out back on the soft, level ground, I felt confident of my footing again to step into a trot.

'Zelis is no small human, so I could never run with him as my burden, but I was not about to spend half a day reaching my next goal. My own nudity was by far the least of my concerns, and if I found something proper where I was going, then perhaps I would don it then. But not before I had found care for my fallen kin.

He had done me the ultimate honor when I had suffered the ultimate shame… he deserved better. I was counting on that mystic human quality to spare me the risk of failure – that of being able to get back up, given half a chance to do so.

I trotted until I was out of breath and I felt it would take me a year to complete my journey, but I pushed on, forcing my legs to extend and my lungs to open. I _needed_ to reach my destination, and I needed to do so quickly. Barely had I lifted him than he had covered me in the blood he had lost, and already there were stripes down the skin on my legs. I was flinging droplets all over the forest with my quick stepping motions, but the moisture only fueled my desperation.

I felt I was going to drop, and I was almost ready to believe that I had been duped yet again by that damnable Machine, when I heard the condemning hum of a teardrop robot surge up behind me.

Ahead, I could just see the beginnings of a sunny patch. The freestanding ruins were of a long-familiar make, and the moss caps that covered everything else had found no purchase on these. They shone brilliantly like fractured glass statues in the sun, bright, blinding beacons at my distance.

Hearing that hum only fed fear into my desperation, and I trotted a little faster despite the pain in my legs. I needed to make this work… needed to reach that sanctuary! I pleaded with every god I had ever heard the name of to allow me that one victory, not for myself but for 'Zelis, who surely deserved a second chance.

I leapt clean out of my skin, crushing the human in my grasp nearer to my chest when the first lance of heat lased the nodding ferns to my left. "No! No!" I screamed, desperate not to lose. I was so close, so close!

Lights flashed ahead, and the telling twinkle of more robots formed in a hovering cloud above the clearing. Alarm coursed through my veins as I hopped aside from the next shot the teardrop behind me took. More robots? Why were they _in_ the clearing?

But when they spread out and moved forward, approaching me, I began to recognize them.

Three booms, unattached but holding position around a central eye. They looked like steel-colored wilting blossoms, both beautiful and deadly but most welcome in my eyes. The bright, loud, searing lances of Flood-purifying lasers branched out from their central eyes, slamming hard into the teardrop pursuing me, and though I did not look back, I heard it explode in ways no human rifle or plasma rifle would ever be able to mimic.

My racing steps eventually earned me the clearing, and I stumbled badly into it until my imbalanced stride finally dropped me to my knees. I had landed sadly far shy of the open steps that had a moss carpet all the way down to the floor at the bottom, far beneath the surface of the world.

I gasped hard, still clutching 'Zelis to my chest, unable to force myself to rise – I had not the energy – but unwilling to believe I had failed, so close to my goal. If the Forerunner Sentinels cut me down for this intrusion, then my failure would become absolute, and 'Zelis would die in my cold, dead arms.

Past my harsh gasping, I looked up and saw a pulsing orb appear at the bottom of the stairwell, the all-too-familiar rings of expanding light signature of a ponderous Installation Monitor. If it was rampant, then I was out of luck. But nothing else on this world had seemed to be, so I held my shriveling hope in check for one final moment of truth as I watched the Monitor float easily through the air up the steps.

The orb paused when it saw us, me sitting helpless on my heels, clutching the human I had carried in a savage unwillingness to let go, and cede defeat.

Just when I thought it might decide to attack, like everything else on this cursed world, I heard it emit a soft, treble-tone voice, saying, "Bring the Reclaimer inside, Protectorate."

_Reclaimer._ They said that the first human to earn the title of Demon had been called that. But _Protectorate_? Was that the similar name for my own kind? My shriveled hope revived, and somewhere, I found the strength to rise. Pulling 'Zelis from the ground, I dropped heavily down the stairs, feeling each footfall land like a Scarab tank. The Monitor led the way, hanging a left at the bottom of the wide stair. Once I was off the moss carpet that blanketed the steps, I found the entire place to be shining, clean, and brightly lit… and fraught with the angles and glass insets all Forerunner architecture is renowned for.

I smiled, feeling almost at home. We stepped down a corridor almost too wide to be considered as much, and mounted a pair of shallow steps at the far end to enter an absolutely panoramic chamber with a large raised dias in the center. The ceiling looked vaulted, but from the center hung what amounted to the largest chandelier of equipment arms I had ever seen. The whole thing hung nearly fifty feet from the top of the room to hang just barely above the surface of the top of the dias. Oscillating slowly around them as if in pastel contemplation of their function were nine long spire like petals forged of the same angular patterns of glass and metal.

When I paused, the Monitor turned to see me. "Place the Reclaimer on the dias, Protectorate."

I knew from the Machine's database that this had once been a medical frigate. But sudden doubt stabbed through me – what if something went wrong? What if the Forerunner programming tried to treat his non-Forerunner self wrongly, and finished the job the Machine had begun? Still… there was nothing else I could do for him, and I knew I had likely taken far too much time just getting here. Tentative, but willing to try, I stepped up, and laid him across the top of the dias. It felt a little like putting him on the floor, but when I backed away again, the oscillating petals pulled inward around the equipment arms and sealed against the first lip of the dias on the floor, stilling once there.

I was alone, barring the Monitor.

"Will the Sentinels keep the other robots out?" I asked.

The Monitor seemed to nod, almost. "Of course."

I folded my arms across my bare chest, feeling the slick reminder of 'Zelisee's ruin sliding across my skin. I felt every bit the traitorous bastard he thought me to be, even though I knew it was not true.

"Would you like something to wear, Protectorate? You seem unusual, standing at duty without a uniform."

"Yes." I sighed, allowing my eyes to close and my exhaustion to sink through me. "And something to wash with."

The Monitor bobbed again, before turning and making a parabolic arc for a far door I had not been through. I stood still; I did not feel willing to leave this chamber, not so long as I knew 'Zelis might still be saved.

I waited for the Monitor to return, and for those petal-doors to lift again, but it took a while for either to happen. The Monitor arrived first; without any item trailing its path, but soon enough a Sentinel emerged from a typical Sentinel-chute high on the wall, and sailed down towards me, a small box affixed to its undercarriage. The box it set down at my hooves, and then opened for me, before drifting back up and away. I knelt, lifting out the cloth and bowl of sparklingly clear water on the top.

By the time I was done washing off, the water was stained almost as darkly as the cloth, but I was more or less clean. Clean enough to dress; I cast a glance at the medical interface for a moment, but it did not move, so I pulled out an outfit that looked remarkably tailored to fit my kind. There were trousers and a fitted tunic with a stiff, upright collar, and a pair of sturdy leather boots. It was simple, and certainly not armor, but it would do.

Barely had I slid on the second boot and gotten the toes of that hoof settled comfortably against the insole, than the large petals lifted from the dias. They turned as they spread, rising away from the floor in a graceful arc that belied their size and stiff disposition. I stood up immediately, hoping for the best. Beside me, the Monitor bobbed once, then chirped, "That's odd."

Worry creased my expression as I cast the orb a look. "What is?"

The Monitor turned its glowing blue eye to regard my query fully. "This Reclaimer seems unusually weak. His body has been healed completely, and is in perfect working order. But… he is fading. There is nothing I can do." I stared openly at the orb, too shocked and too in denial to have words for a reply. "I have done all I can… it is almost as if he _wants_ to die… as if he has no reason left to live." The Monitor seemed to give a helpless shrug, though it owned no shoulders with which to effect such a motion.

I turned back to see the still form sprawled across the top of the dias, wanting above all else just to see it move. _Move_, I insisted, mentally. _Please._

He did not… and as I drew closed the gap between us, stepping up onto the dias to kneel beside him, I wondered what I could do. He had reached a precipice – this I knew. But there is no machine, no medical wonder, no pill, to cure what ails the mind and soul. He did look better… the hollowness was gone from his face, and the blood had been cleaned away, leaving only unbroken skin showing through the few ragged holes torn through his skinsuit. It looked to be made of a thin polymer resin, backed by a softer, absorbent material. But despite this seeming restoration of health, he looked no more alive than when I had first lain him there.

I shifted my weight to my heels, settling where I had knelt. "Ah, I suppose I should likely explain what has happened to you, brother." I began, mumbling. It was a strange thing, for me… to sit beside a fallen brother like this and speak words I knew no one would hear. But it served as a small comfort to myself, with my searing need to explain, to be understood – to tell them that it was not I who had wronged them. "I need to tell you what greatness you have shown me, what valor and honor as I have never before seen in anyone, of any race."

I lifted my eyes, watching as the Monitor stayed where it was, bobbing up and down hesitatingly, in that typical, usual Forerunner Monitor manner.

Still looking that way, I added, "It was not my intention to cause what grief I doubtless have… to burden you with this terrible fate. It was a great kindness, 'Zelis, for you to come to my rescue when I saw no out from the terrible shame I suffered at the hands of that Machine. You have proven beyond any doubt, doubt that I confess never truly existed to need surpassing…" I hung my head, lifting a hand to rest it against my face. "I am sorry, 'Zelis… sorry I could do nothing for you, when it was you in turn who needed me to return the favor."

I opened my eyes again to watch my hand fall back to my thighs, turning both over to see my palms. I could still feel the needle-holes written all through my skin down my spine, but each was hardly big enough to well a bead of blood from, and all had sealed of their own accord even before I had made it to the collapse where I had found 'Zelis to begin with. I was in no danger from those minor prickles. Nor would the flayed skin across my shins harm me overmuch.

I had just flicked my eyes over to see his face again when I heard the Monitor chirp brightly. Startled, I swung my head around, to see what the commotion was about – had he died, so suddenly, quietly, fading away in such a manner that I might miss it?

Seeing me looking at it, the Monitor bobbed in my direction once, before stilling again.

"What is it?" I asked, daring to be told of such a fate.

I was blessedly disappointed; "His condition has stabilized. If you wish to move him, Protectorate, you may do so now."

Relief flooded through me to such a great degree that I felt flushed and alive afterwards – had I really been holding my breath? I looked back down at the human, and crooked my mandibles into a tentative smile.

Time to make amends on his behalf, for that lovely mate of his…

I owed him still.

.

**TORI-138**

If memory serves, he never asked me what her name was. I let my fingers idly play across the charging sequences, warming the engines on the sloop but not firing them yet. My mind lingered on the cat, more because there was really nothing going to reconcile me to her so long as she associated me with the disappearance of her chosen pet human. It had happened twice to her so far.

I didn't really have a plan, but I had spent several hours just lying on the bed and bawling my eyes out. I was out of tears – there were no more to cry. I knew also that if either hadn't turned up by now, then neither likely ever would. I certainly hadn't seen Flint come tromping up the corridor from the airlock, and there was no signal from the systems that an Elite was banging on the hull.

I let my fingers rest on the lip of the console under the control board, watching as the ship did a self-diagnostic, running all the pre-flight checks before it turned over flight controls. I half wondered if the droids in the forest could penetrate the sloop's hull with their weaponry, but when I glanced over at a soft chime from a sensor reader, I felt my eyebrows rise somewhat.

There _was_ an Elite, banging on the hull. I studied the readings from the airlock exterior, pondering what I was seeing; either Anuna had decided to drag in Flint's carcass for me, or there was someone else with him. But the sloop was pretty certain that the one doing the knocking was an Elite.

With a sigh, I stood up from the pilot's chair and made my way to the rear hatch. Technically, the sloop has three exit points – personnel exit hatches under the fore of the left and right wings, and a bay exit in the back under the engine manifolds. The one in the back was big enough to drive a vehicle up into, I guess, but I had not seen anything parked in there. If ever Flint allowed something, though, I was betting it would be some modern-day version of whatever they were calling the Warthog these days.

Hell, they might still call them Warthogs, even. I don't know.

On my way past the ancillary weapon lockers, positioned in sets of six on either side of every airlock the sloop harbored, I smacked the side of my fist against one of them. I paused long enough to lift a standard MA from the rack it extended for me, then continued. I was not above shooting Anuna dead if he tried to hand me a mangled carcass as an apology.

And, I was in that kind of a mood, now I was over the initial onset of guilt and remorse.

Reaching the hatchway, I opened the internal seal, then touched the override to let the exterior slide back and descend the mounting ramp. I stepped through the airlock itself and up to the head of the ramp, and looked down, wondering what I was looking at.

From somewhere, Anuna had gotten a different outfit… and he'd peeled Flint out of that weird-ass beetle-exoskeleton armor he'd been wearing. Bits of the black skinsuit hung away in shredded holes, but he didn't look hurt through any of the ones I could see. Needless to say, it was a confusing sight indeed. I slid my finger down into the trigger guard and rested it on the trigger, unsure why he'd be standing there holding Flint like a limp rag.

"What." I said, eventually, when all he did was stand there and stare at me.

When he cocked his head just slightly to the side in regarding me, I noted something odd… he _looked_ like the same splitlip, but this dude did not have black eyes. Rather, they were a soft, almost pastel yellow. Was it a different fellow, someone else who had known Flint and found him abandoned in the woods after Anuna had left him for dead? I felt my demeanor soften slightly.

Letting my shoulders sag a little, I sighed. "Bring him up." I turned away, wondering what I was supposed to do with either of them… I wanted Flint no less, but there was tension between us that was both damning and condemning. I had put my best effort forward, but all I could ever get out of him was conflict. It had seemed to be all he knew how to do.

I stepped out of the interior side of the airlock and stood to one side, watching as the Elite stepped in past me, having followed. When he cast me a glance, I tipped the barrel of the MA in my hands past him down the corridor. He turned his head that way, then after casting me another glance, turned that way and began to walk.

It was a little odd, seeing Flint like that.

I shut the hatches, figuring if I caught their ship in orbit (or a span back from it) I could just plug in and drop the splitlip off before going my own way. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with Flint – or if he was dead, what I was supposed to do with the body – but I knew despite outward protest that I was relieved to see him again.

I followed the splitlip up the corridor once I was done, and caught him waiting for me at the first juncture where the hall split and went both inward, deeper into the sloop's midsection, and also farther forward. I gestured him to go to the side, figuring if Flint turned out to be dead I could always just hole up in the other (mainly unused) quarter. By gross technicality, the sloop had more than a dozen of the things, but only two had been fitted as such. The rest were empty, available as holding cells (if we needed prisoners on an op) or storage (if by some chance we turned into pack rats that badly).

I didn't see Artemis around anywhere at all, but I figured that was for the best – she would probably only freak out at the splitlip anyway, and that would require me to interact with him more than I was now. I was not in the mood for any such event to transpire, so the lack of the cat was, for the moment, a good thing.

He laid Flint on the bed without me having to tell him as much, so I stayed at the doorway with the MA hanging from one hand and wondered what to do now. After the Elite withdrew, I saw Flint breathe.

Seeing him turn and look at me, I flicked my gaze up to him, wondering anew about the situation.

He made a strange little half-noise, then offered, "Might I take a moment to explain what has transpired without you?"

I snorted. I felt I already knew enough to be suitably damned… I didn't need a splitlip to spell it out for me.

He, though, took that as a 'sure', somehow, and began with, "I would beg forgiveness of you on his behalf."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, feeling a little surge of puzzled curiosity. Maybe he wasn't going to reiterate my own version of things… but could that be his alien culture talking?

He excused my doubt without so much as the honor of forewarning, though; "Things were not as they appeared, when you found what you perceived to be myself in the forest. Nor were they how you perceived them, when 'Zelis in turn met up with us."

I wrinkled my face. "What I _perceived_ to be you."

He inclined his long, sausage-shaped head. "I was present in mind, only. I was a prisoner of a Machine, and had endured a mental upload into a mechanical representation of myself that the Machine could control… much like a puppet."

Inwardly, I cringed… but even as I took that in – not sure if I believed it or not yet – I began to gather where the rest of this conversation was going to go. I was not slow, nor an idiot, after all… but it still felt like a condemnation on my part. I had, it seemed, not abandoned Flint to fight with an Elite. Instead, I had abandoned him to fight with a _robot_ Elite… doubtless nine times harder to put down in a fistfight. I felt my eyebrows crawl across my face to meet in the middle. "You didn't say anything?"

"I could not." He answered, sounding as if he were ashamed of his inability; "there was no contesting the Machine for control of that replica. For a time, I was fooled into believing that it was indeed I, changed only with implanted mechanisms… until such time as I was granted my release when 'Zelis destroyed the replica and freed me from the Machine's grasp."

I felt my whole world swim, and I sank into the chair beside the door. The same chair, I realized as I sat in it, that _nobody_ had ever sat in before. Ever. So much of the sloop never even got walked through, that items that never saw use were just as common as those that did. "I guess you suppose he knew something I didn't… could see you needed help you couldn't ask for."

"I wanted above all else to be able to tell you, yes." He answered, softly. "To correct what you thought of me… and of him… to call you back when you turned away from him. You were in err… but I could say nothing. The Machine would not permit me. Once freed, I went back, and found him." He cast a glance over at where Flint still lay, not having moved an inch from where he'd been put. "I have brought him as far as I can."

I let my gaze sink down to Flint, wondering anew what all I had missed. Questions remained, of course – how had he known? What had clued him in? And why hadn't he told me, rather than feeding me that righteous bullshit about how the splitlip had killed a human and deserved his fate? Or had Flint only come to the same conclusion that Anuna had wanted him to, but by a wholly other, unsuspecting path, and not known at all?

Knowing Flint… honestly, either scenario was just as likely.

"'Zelis is something of a complex creature, as I do not doubt you have discovered." Anuna added, turning his gaze back to me. "On the outside, he appears as any other warrior might; but he is no less fragile than you or I. There are aspects of every living being that cannot be ignored, and I fear he has done so for too long. Perhaps he will never show it… but he harbors wounds no physical weapon could ever inflict. He will need his friends, his companions. He will need to trust their loyalty without question. I have healed the injuries my replica inflicted, but that is all I can do."

I blinked at him, feeling a little torn. How could this alien know my Flint better than me? How could he have such a deep understanding, where I had failed utterly?

"This is where you must take over." Anuna said. "I must return to my place among my people… doubtless after this, there will be questions needing answered, and amends needing made. I have suffered a great shame, all without cause or deservance. That leaves you… Tohrey… to pick up what slack remains."

I looked back down, at Flint, still a little mixed. Yeah, yeah, rattle on. But would Flint understand half of this? Anuna might be forgiving as hell, but the last thing Flint had seen of me was my back, walking away, abandoning him to this fate. Flint was not terribly renowned for his forgiving nature, even towards me.

I still had a rough stripe on my lip where he'd busted it for me, after all. I looked up at the Elite for a moment, feeling a little aspect had gone unmentioned. "You sound as if you've a particular vested interest in…"

He interrupted me. "I most assuredly do. Take care of this human warrior, Tohrey. He has proven himself no less a brother to me than my own bloodkin, and I do not aim to see that go unrewarded."

That explained quite a bit about the unsaid bits Flint would on occasion mention. Anuna this, G'wi that. Never the how or the why. But while the story was still grossly incomplete, now I understood better… and perhaps, why the splitlips had their own name – or word – for him, when every other human I had seen interacting with them always got called by their real names. I nodded, for lack of a worded reply.

Seeming satisfied with that, he turned past me, and stepped through the door heading out. I lurched to my feet, going after him. "Wait."

He paused about three steps down the hall, and half-turned back to see me.

"I can take you to the ship… there probably aren't any more dropships out there by now anyway." I offered, all in one breath.

I saw him crook his mandibles at me, and I swear it looked a little like he was smiling at me. Inclining his head, he answered, "Thank you."

.

**FLINT-093**

When I woke up, I felt like a zombie. I couldn't see at all, as my eyes felt like they'd been burned right out of my face. My skin was clammy and a little itchy, but while I didn't feel cold, I certainly wasn't comfortable. Every muscle I owned ached miserably as if I had been taken after by Brutes with big clubs… suffice to say I just wanted to go back to sleep and finish decomposing, like a proper zombie ought.

But I was awake, now, and rarely did I ever get the opportunity to just go back to sleep after such an event as my waking. During my youth, this had been governed by Mendez. Later, it was more because I had too much to do and I often caught winks in-suit and on-the-job. Nowadays… it was because of that cat.

But as the bits and parts of me began to check in, I noted a couple oddities. First of all, there was no cat. Secondly, I was face-up, when I duly recall being sitting curled over forward when I blacked out. As more and more of my environment checked slowly in, I began to realize that whatever had happened between then and now, it had been vast and had gotten me moved to somewhere else. After all… that heap of shattered timbers could never feel like a standard mattress, and all I recall taking off was the broken helmet. If my nerves were not lying to me, I nolonger wore any of that overpowered armor suit. Not a scrap.

I did feel like I was still up to my neck in the skinsuit, though… had someone come along and seen me, and picked me up, thinking I had somehow survived that mess I'd been through with Anuna? Memory of what all had hurt then trickled in past the full-body ache I now endured. Oh, I was sore. But beyond that, I couldn't seem to agitate enough to figure out if I was still punched full of raggedy holes.

I finally got my eyes to open, and I studied the ceiling of the quarter I was in for a moment, feeling puzzled. Wasn't this room inside the _Whispers of Fate_? What in all gods-be was I doing back here? I remembered Tori being mad at me again right before Anuna had jumped my shit, but I was still struggling to recall the exact details of that particular conversation when I saw her appear off to the side. I paused in my recollections as I watched her get closer, then twist halfway to sit next to me on the bed. She reached up and drew a finger across my face, making me squint, but when I raised my arm to catch that hand and pull it down, I experienced a mental hiccup _after_ I had caught her hand and been holding it for a full second.

That arm was supposed to be _useless_. I had felt the shoulder joint shatter, had felt the severed collarbones follow it down out of my side as ligaments and tendons tore right apart. I even remembered that forearm being snapped in two.

I looked at that hand, curious why it didn't even hurt – and it worked _fine_. I saw Tori smile at me, probably thinking I was looking at _her_ hand, which I was still hanging onto. I let go of it, and flexed the fingers of that hand. Had I mistaken…? Was it the other arm…? No, that one worked fine, too. I brought them up and held them together, watching. After a moment, I felt mild amazement when neither one so much as trembled where I held them. After having the Longsword spear me to my seat, I had lost the ability to hold very still at all, when extended out in mid-air. This… this was novel.

Still marveling at the whole thing, I turned my hands around, to see my palms. Nothing looked amiss. Finally, I rested them both on my chest, and looked up at Tori. Had I dreamed the whole thing? If I had… then I had a few more issues going on inside my skull than I liked. I'd have taken watching G'wi chop me in half again and again every single night over _this,_ any day!

But that did not explain Tori still sitting there, looking back at me. Tori was a recent development. She'd happened _after_ I crashed my Longsword, _after_ the 51st Aeronautic had been wiped out of the sky. So now I was confused anew.

"How do you feel?" She asked.

"Um." How _did_ I feel? I was elated that my arms both worked, felt I should be bouncing off the walls with jubilant glee that I wasn't a mangled corpse, but also still quite sore after being laid into by those Brutes… of whom I wasn't sure any were actually Brutes. "… hard to say."

She smiled at me again. Was there something wrong with this picture? Tori was not easily _pleased_, and for all intents and purposes, she really did look quite satisfied with herself. It was nice, for once, to not feel as if I needed to watch my back around her, but… nonetheless, it still seemed weird on her.

Rather than answering to what I had said, or adding another question, she took both of my hands in both of hers, and stood up, drawing away. I sat up after her retreat, pondering the utter lack of pain from _anywhere_ on me… what really got me as she drew me off the bed and stood me up was the part where my bum shoulder hadn't so much as _twinged_ at me for that.

"Should probably get this… whatever it's made out of… off of you." Tori mentioned, regaining my attention from the musing distraction. She took a combat knife (it was that or a steak knife, honestly… we did not have scissors aboard) from a sheath atop the Mjolnir lockers behind her, and reached her empty hand for my throat. I held still as she plucked the spray-on skinsuit from my skin and made a slit down the front, for some reason feeling trusting enough to let her risk slicing me open. She didn't even nick me, remarkably enough, but she stopped cutting at waist-level, and set the knife aside to peel the strange stuff back.

As if in sympathetic apology for her earlier temper, she tugged it off my good shoulder first – then took a bit more care to do the same over my left. This attitude came to a dead halt, though, when she got it over the deltoid. I looked down at it, pausing in much the same way she had.

"Flint…"

"Isn't there supposed to be a scar there?" I finished for her, just as puzzled as she sounded. I poked the spot, but it felt not only _solid_, but built just like the other shoulder was. It looked like I had never been hit with the strut at all. I marveled at it for a while, but Tori went back to peeling the polymer skinsuit off of me with renewed vigor – I half-smirked, imagining she was doing that more to see what else was missing than because she wanted me out of the suit.

My expression tickled her, and she cast me a grin before she circled around behind me, holding the shoulders of the skinsuit as I pulled the rest of my arms out of it.

"_Flint_."

I tried to turn around, but she was still holding on to the skinsuit, and I only got about halfway turned when she stopped me by that virtue. Her eyes were on my shoulders again. I cocked an eyebrow. "What now?" If the front of that scar was gone, why wouldn't the backside be, too?

She finally met my gaze. "Flint, you have a _tattoo_."

Oh.

That.

I nodded. "Yes… you didn't know that?"

She made a face at me, finally letting go of me so I could turn the rest of the way around. She slapped the back of one hand off my chest as if in greeting. "I've seen you plenty from the _front_, Flint, but I've never seen you bare-assed from the _back_. Where on Earth did you get a _tattoo_?"

"Marine took an ink wand to me." I answered, with a shrug.

She wrinkled her face again. "You sat _still_ for that? What's it say, anyway? It's not English."

I couldn't help it – I smirked at her. "It's not."

"Well, I'd wager to guess the first two or so letters are gone." She informed me, cocking an eyebrow at me as if wondering what to think of me now she knew I had a mark that was not a scar.

"Why's that?" Not surprising, really… given that he'd written it across the top of the back of my shoulders, and that was precisely where that Longsword landing strut had gone through me. Probably wasn't a word anymore, actually.

She pretended to be holding the words in the air in front of me, reading off from memory for me; "It says 'lior morior bellator."

"Melior." I corrected. Yeah… couple of letters got punched out. Oh well. I didn't care enough to get it fixed. Though, what incarnation of "_better to die on one's feet_" I was wearing _now_ was anyone's guess.

"Why that?" Tori asked, more than likely well knowing what the words meant given that she'd spent thirty years with her head buried in the sands of science. It was Latin, after all.

"It was the motto of the 51st Aeronautic." I shrugged. "Said I was one of the guys, and they all had the same thing. So they all drank some beer and had fun drawing on me."

She giggled, evidently thinking that was funny. "And you just sat there and _let_ them. Bunch of drunk Marines, doodling on a Spartan. That's the most hilarious thing I have ever heard, Flint." Folding her arms over her chest, she asked, "Were you drunk, too?"

"Nope." I shook my head, tugging on the end of the slice she'd made with a thumb. "Doesn't agree with me."

"What doesn't, being drunk, or just alcohol in general?"

Okay, so that was a jab. It was, I have to admit, the least hurtful jab she'd aimed at me so far. "Alcohol in general, Tori." I answered, shaking my head again, this time in bemusement. "Being hung over never agrees with _anybody_."

She sighed, but she was still wearing the remnants of that grin from before, so when she reached for the skinsuit again, I didn't back away. As she busied herself with peeling me out of the rest of it, she changed the subject. "So Anuna tells me you've a soft interior?"

I hiccupped at her. "Aside that he wouldn't really know, Anuna's dead now." I told her, feeling mixed and rumpled all at once. Go and spoil the moment, why don't she! For once we were getting along fairly well, and she had to go and bring up a subject like that.

"No, he isn't." Tori replied, casually. "He's the one who brought you in."

I stood silent for a moment, trying to puzzle that one out. One thing I _do_ recall distinctly, was having finished that fight by breaking his neck for him. How could he have brought me in, with a broken neck to his name? Also, _why_ would he have brought me in, given what kind of concerted effort he was giving to trying to _kill_ me? I gave Tori a confused look when she stood up, gathering the skinsuit up in a bundle in her arms.

"He's the one who patched you up after that last fight, too. He didn't say anything about erasing scar tissues, though… to that end, your bloodwork is clean, now, too… somehow." She sounded almost as if she were rambling. "Asked me to forward his thanks, by the way," she added. "Said you set him loose when you killed the replica."

Eh?

She laughed, and patted me affectionately on the shoulder as she went past, stepping the length of the room to drop the bundle into the chair that nobody uses that stays next to the door. Turning back around, she continued with, "That was a robot, apparently." She shrugged. "Looked like him, wasn't him."

Oh… that explained why he seemed to be full of metal parts.

Closing the gap between us again, she poked me in the chest with a finger, and pushed. Wondering what that was about, I backed up. "I dropped him off with the first purple-hulled ship I found, so he's off doing damage control for all the nasty crap his… avatar?… did for him. Probably won't see him around much for a while."

"Poor kid." I muttered, finding the bed with my calves and deciding to sit down since it was that or fall over. Tori finally put her pushing finger down, then.

"Anuna's a kid?" She asked, suddenly plopping down on my lap, straddling me.

"Well, he's younger than G'wi." I answered. "Don't really know how old he is."

She unzipped the front of her shirt and shrugged out of it, leaving it on the floor behind her. "Not really important, I guess." Freed of the shirt, she was now sitting there – on my legs – in nothing but her pants and bra. I had learned a while back what this meant, which might have been why she'd never let me get started after any of the clothes in the drawer set next to the Mjolnir lockers.

Would have only needed to peel me out of that, too.

Like I said… Tori can be pleasant, sometimes.

Just past her, I could see the cat sitting in the doorway, watching us.


End file.
